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A 



Practical 

Solution of the 



Labor Question 

NEW 



GOSPEL -"= 



Thorough 



Remedy Against 
Hard Times 



LABOR 



pi flew Qospel of labo 



The Only Peaceable and Practical 



Solution of tie Labor Question 



And Thorough 



Remedy Against Hard Times 



— BY 



A. ROADMAKER. ^ /y ~^ 



published by s. wegener. 

Seattle, Wash. 

1894. 



-^1 



Copyright 189 % by S. Wegener. 



PRESS OF THE REVIEW 
PRINTING CO. 

Fremont-Seattle, Washington. 



TABLE. OF CONTENTS. 

Introduction — A President oi the United States pages. 
desires to know the causes of 
the discontent oi the working 
classes 5 to 12 



BOOK I. 



Chapter I — About Labor Statistics and how 
they should be used to bring out 
the truth - - - - 13 to 18 

Chapter Ii — The Income of the American 

wage-workers in a prosperous year 19 to 23 

Chapter III — The increasing curse of no work 

ior the worker - - - 24 to 37 

Chapter IV — The condition of the American 

Farmers. A National Tragedy - 38 to 43 

( Ihapteb V — How the low income oi the work- 
ing classes affects the whole peo- 
ple. — How, through the anarchy 
of production, hard times are 
made. — And how the people of 
the United States get through an 
industrial depression. — A tale of 
man's barbarous inhumanity to 
man - - - - - 44 to 72 

Chapter VI — The income of the employers. — 
How, by means of small wages 
paid, millionaire-fortunes are cre- 
ated. — How and why trusts and 
monopolies are formed. — The 
veil lilted from the prime cause 
oi the labor problem and of the 
increasing impoverishment of the 
people 73 to 111 



BOOK II. 

Chapter I — How through fire, sword and the 
hangman's rope the present in- 
dustrial system has been forced 
upon the people of England. — 
And how in the United States it 
has been nursed and fostered by 
the legislators with the consent 
of the people - ' - - - 112 to 150 

Chapter II — The remedy. — A law for the pre- 
vention of industrial and finan- 
cial crises and depressions. — Is a 
radical measure practical? - 151 to 172 

Chapter III — How the national production 
could be carried on under the 
new industrial system, without 
employers, humanely, profitably 
and justly to all - - - 173 to 182 

Chapter IV — Effects of the new system upon 
immigration, the national finan- 
ces, and the farmers. — No more 
financial depressions! — No more 
starving farmers! — No more su- 
perfluous immigrants! - - 183 to 192 

Chapter V — The beneficial effect of the new 
system of production upon the 
people. — It changes lives of care 
into lives of happiness. — It makes 
enslaved workers freemen. — It 
fosters knowledge, art and science 
— It renders man more perfect. — 
It cleanses and thoroughly re- 
forms the body politic - - 193 to 223 

Chapter VI — Conclusion. — The main objection 
to the new system answered. — 
The friends of the proposed 
measure should spread the New 
Gospel of Labor. - - - 224 to 229 



INTRODUCTION. 

In the spring of L88 - I attended, by request of a nura- 
,iv fellow-townsmen, to some public business at 
Washington, D. C, which made it necessary for me to wait 
several times upon the President. 

Encouraged by the President's urbanity and evident de- 
sire to do right, in the matter which I had to lay hefore 
him. by the people. I asked, at the last interview T was 
granted, tor permission to submit to him a question regard- 
ing the labor-troubles which at that time, through the pre- 
vailing industrial depression, occupied the public mind to a 
great extent. 

Th-' consent having kindly been given, I said: "Mr. 
President, are you aware of the fact that great discontent is 
ing among our working people? " He replied: " Yes ; 
I know there is; but 1 do not know the cause of it, and " 
[he added alter a moment's pause, seeing that I looked a 
trifle surprised] " I will tell you why I do not know it. Not 
being able, through my official position, to go among the 
workingmen and hear directly from them what they com- 
plain about, I have endeavored to ascertain from the work- 
inginen's committees who come occasionally hefore me the 
nature of their grievances and the remedial measures which 
they recommend. Bui there I mel with this difficulty: The 
representatives of the different organizations of workingmen 
told me different - about the causes of the evils under 

which thev suffer and asked for different mean- of redn 3& 



A New Gospel of Labor 



And when I informed the later comers, that a committee 
from some other organization had previously made a differ- 
ent proposition for allaying the labor troubles, 1 was in- 
variably assured by them that the first comers knew noth- 
ing about the matter, and I was requested not to place any 
confidence in their statements. I have, consequently, come 
to the conclusion, that the American workingmen do not 
know yet, what they want ; and if they don't, how shall I 
know?" 

Knowing that the President's observations were but too 
true, I asked, if he were inclined and could spare the time 
to read a paper submitted to him on that subject, whereupon 
he promptly answered : " I shall gladly do so ; and more 
than that, if you will take the trouble to write me stating 
the causes of the discontent of the American workingmen 
and the means required for their relief. I assure you that I 
shall not only read your statements, but will carefully con- 
sider them, and, if possible, act upon them," ' 

When the President so openly [there were a number of 
U. S. Senators and Congressmen present] declared his de- 
sire for information on the labor question, I was very much 
tempted to hand him two bills which I had caused to be 
introduced in Congress some time ago relating to the relief 
of the working classes, and of which I had several printed 
copies with me. But knowing that these measures of relief 
could not be properly valued by any one without having 
first received a thorough explanation of the causes of the 
labor-troubles, I simply thanked the President for the confi- 
dence with which he had honored me, and retired. 

The President's words illustrated with a clearness that re- 
moved all doubt the existing difference of opinions among 
the working classes of the United States regarding the labor- 



.1 Ni w Gospel of Labor 



question, and their consequent inability to point out its 
proper solution. And they furthermore taught me that this 
inability of the workingmen to state " what they wanted" 
injured their cause, because it compelled those in high places 
who were able and willing to help them to withhold that 
help, until the people most interested in this great economi- 
cal problem had learnt to know the causes of the evils un- 
der which they suffered, and united on the manner how 
these causes were to be removed. 

1. thus, became convinced that the first step towards a so- 
lution of the industrial question must necessarily consist in 
giving the working people this information and in propos- 
ing to them a remedy on which they could unite. And with 
these requirements before me I commenced to write — not, 
however, the condensed short statement first intended for 
the use alone of the President, but this book, with the pur- 
pose of making its contents understood to even the lowest 
worker and thus to carry the needed information to, and 
produce unity of thought on the labor-question among, all 
those whom it would reach. 

But before it could be completed the times had become 
changed, the industrial depression passed by, and business 
commenced to revive. From the rostrum and in the press 
the customary praises were again trumpeted into the world 
about the great extent of this country, its splendid resources, 
the wealth of its people, and the never failing chances for 
• •very willing worker to earn a comfortable living. Immi- 
gration flocked here again in increased numbers from every 
part of the world, and the whole country looked, as in 1880, 
like a gigantic shop with the whole nation engaged by hand- 
and electricity, to work and produce in feverish 
by day and night. 



A New Gospel of Laboi 



In these busy days the favorite hope of the American peo- 
ple that the previous era of continuous prosperity had, sure- 
ly, set in again made many millions of them forget the les- 
sons of the past ; and the time was therefore not propitious 
for endeavoring to inform the masses about the cause of the 
industrial depressions. I, consequently, abandoned my writ- 
ing until the coming days of hard times which I knew to 
be fast approaching. 

These days are, presently, on us again and in such a se- 
vere manner that the boasting phrases of those who, only a 
short while ago, in their speeches and writings boomed this 
country as the Eldorado of the workingmen have ceased to 
be fashionable, and the boasters become silenced by the ap- 
palling number of unemployed men clamoring for work in 
every city of the land in order to be able to support their 
starving families. Now the talk about hard times is again 
in order, and more than ever before. 

The opinions about labor-matters which scarcely more 
than a decade ago were only voiced in timid whisperings 
in the humble dwellings of the poor, but were tabooed by 
the great public as a sort of treason against the good name 
and reputation of this great country, — these opinions are to- 
day openly expressed from the house-tops. They have 
found their way to every home in the land, even into the 
palaces of the rich and mighty, and form the constant 
theme of discussion in the great parliaments and congresses 
of the nations as well as in the meeting room of the labor- 
unions. 

Nay more than that ! To the solution of the industrial 
question are looking forward to-day as to a new gospel the 
untold hundreds of millions of producers of all the civilized 
nations of the Earth; not only the wage-workers, but also 



A \ Go& of Labor. 



the farmers, the professional men and the small business 
people, in fact the whole middle class as well as tin 1 me- 
chanics and laborers in factory and field. 

The latter do so. hoping, that the solution of the problem 

may bring them steady employment at reasonable hours oi 
daily work and good wages, which means to them a life in- 
comparably superior to their present constant struggle for 
the hare means of an existence: while the middle class ex- 
pects that an adjustment of the labor trouble may bring 
them escape from the endless business-depressions and the 
trust and monopoly aggressions, between the two of which 
the small business-men are ground yearly by thousands in- 
to poverty and threatened soon to be entirely merged into 
the already overfilled ranks of the wage-working pro- 
letarians. 

But there are ominous signs becoming visible all around 

us, that many of the people who have for years clamored in 

vain tV.r relief are losing the hope that they can ever get it 

by peaceable means. The public has so often, for years. 

been deceived by promises of reform measures by both the 

great parties without any good having so far been achieved, 

that the belief is spreading that nothing short of a bloody 

■Union will solve our labor troubles: and the clashing 

of arms at the Carnegie mills in Pennsylvania and in the 

mines in Idaho and Tennessee was considered by thousands 

itizens of all classes of our people as the skirmishes pre- 

ing the approaching deadly conflict between capital 

and labor. 

Now, therefore, the time has come when those who have 
the welfare of the people at heart, and who want to 
humanity and not the shotgun rule the nation, should come 
forward and assist in bringing the labor-problem, at present 



10 A New Gospel of Labor. 

the most important question before all the civilized nations, 
to a speedy, thorough and peaceable solution. 

Viewing the matter from this standpoint, I believe that 
what I voluntarily commenced to contribute towards that 
end in 188 — , as stated before, it becomes now my duty as a 
citizen who has the peace and welfare of his country at 
heart, to complete and publish without further delay. I 
feel especially called upon to perform this duty because, 
from an earnest and unprejudiced study of the labor-prob- 
lem, at the hand of history, statistics and personal acquaint- 
ance with the condition of the working classes of the United 
States for the past 35 years, I have become enabled to lay 
before the American people an explanation of the causes of 
the labor-trouble and to prove my statements by the official 
statistics of the United States. 

In doing so, I shall cite, from the same indisputable 
sources, facts and figures about the social-economical affairs 
of our people during the last twenty years which have 
never been published before and which reveal so much that 
is contrary to humanity and common justice in the relations 
between the producers and the capitalists, that they must 
stir every fair-minded and intelligent American citizen who 
becomes cognizant of these facts to thought and action. 

The remedy which I propose is not a doubtful speculative 
scheme which may or ma} 7 not do any good ; but it is cer- 
tain of permanently improving the condition of the entire 
producing classes, because it provides for a change in our 
present mode of production by which the obnoxious features 
of the same that form the causes of the industrial depres- 
sions are completely removed. 

And as the manner of introducing this change is as 
peaceable and lawful as the latter will be radical, there 



.1 .V Gospel of Labor. 1 1 



could be no opposition to the remedy, were it not that, while 
it guarantees .-toady employment and the full fruit of his la- 
bor to every worker in the country, it also puts an end to. 

the future accumulation of millionaire fortunes, and there- 
by necessarily incurs the opposition of that class and of its 
adherents in the press, in the pulpit and in the legislative 
halls. 

But what of it. if this proposition to solve the great labor- 
problem be called fantastical by some, or ridiculed or scoffed 
at by others, who make it their business to oppose every re- 
form ! There was a time when nearly all mankind ridi- 
culed the idea of the sun standing still because everybody 
it move, as he thought, and yet it stands in its place 
since the creation of our world and will do so yet for many 
to come. 

There was a time when the existence of this continent 

- d< nied by all but one man, and yet it existed, and is 
the home of millions of people to-day. 

There was a time when the abolition of slavery found 
but very few adherents in this country and many millions 
of opponents, and yet in a comparatively short time it has 
been abolished. 

So the proposed change in our present industrial system 

may be ridiculed to-day as an effort to introduce an idealis- 

-tate of society, and yet. in a few short years it may be 

the accepted industrial reform of the most civilized nations 

of the Earth. For in modern times the development of 

mankind seems to advance with a rapidity proportionate to 

that of the motive power employed in its industries, slow 

hand-work for thousands of years until a century ago, then 

m-power a hundred years, and to-day the lightning- 

• 1 <>f the invisibl trie current: -<> that, when we 



12 A New Gospel of Labor 



look back, we see that the progress of the human mind for 
the last 30 years exceeds that of centuries passed just before, 
while to foresee the progress which the next 30 years may 
bring us surpasses the capacity of the human intellect. 

If the author, therefore, knows that his proposed measure 
of relief is reasonable, is a logical conclusion from existing 
conditions, advises nothing impossible to perform, is based 
upon truth and humanity, and will, if adopted, benefit an 
overwhelming majority of the people, he has not only a 
right to offer such a remedy, but it would be neglect of hie 
duty to his fellow-men or cowardice to do otherwise, espec- 
ially in consideration of the fact that it is the first and only 
radical, peaceable and practical solution of the labor-ques- 
tion yet offered to the people of the United States. 

THE AUTHOR. 



BOOK ON 



CHAPTER 1 1. 



AlBOUt Labob Statistics, and How They Should he Used 
to Bring Out the Truth. 



As in a case of sickness it is necessary before deciding 
Upon a remedy to know the disease, so in order to judge 
whether a proposed solution of the labor-problem be appro- 
priate or not. the nature of the trouble, its causes, must be 
examined into. This is the more required, because there 
are so many people yet who deny that there is a necessity 
I'^r a speedy settlement of this question, who assert that 
there is work for all who are willing to labor, that wages are 
high, that the hard times are owing to temporary monetary 
difficulties, want of confidence and similar well known evils 
which happen among all civilized nations, and that, alto- 
•r. the producing classes of the United States are the 
best paid, the best living, and the happiest on the face of the 
globe. 

- ird as such assertions may appear in these present 
prolonged times of general stagnation of business, they are 
served up to the people again, as soon as better times set in, 
from the forum and in the press with so much pertinacity 

to deceive many into believing them. It is, therefore. 

necessary to bring convincing proof of the error of those 

ssertions, for which purpose the United States 

sua reports shall take the floor and teach us. through 



14 A New Gospel of Labor. 

their official records, the financial condition of the produc- 
ing classes, especially of the wage- workers and farmers who 
form in every civilized country the majority of the popula- 
tion. 

To obtain an insight into the condition of these people, 
as near to the present time as possible, the most appropriate 
census reports would be the ones of 1890 ; but owing to the 
fact that the government bureau having charge of these 
matters needs from 6 to 7 years to complete the reports for 
a census year, the statistics for 1890 are up to the present 
time only published in fragments which, for the purposes of 
this book, do not furnish the desired information. 

We are, consequently, thrown back on the census of 1880 
and compelled, in ascertaining the condition of the produc- 
ing classes, to use facts and figures which are, for that pur- 
pose, far more unfavorable than the statistics of 1890 would 
be. For, 1880 was a highly prosperous year with railroad 
building and all industrial work in full operation through- 
out the United States, giving employment to nearly all the 
workers of a population counting then only 50 millions of 
souls. 

The year 1890 looked quite the reverse, being the com- 
mencement of the present hard times. Shops and factories 
were getting closed ; the government land which in 1880 
had been a potent factor in drawing off the unemployed from 
the cities by the hundreds of thousands, had dwindled down 
to such small local proportions as to cease being a national 
agent of employment; and finally, the population counted 
62 millions in 1890, with an immigration of the lowest kind 
pouring into the country and glutting the labor-market 
with obnoxious cheap labor in a worse degree than ever 
before. 

This is to be borne in mind, so that, no matter how ugly 



A V Gospel of Labor. 15 

a picture of the condition of the people the statistics of 1880 
may produce, the reader knows, it would have looked darker 
still if painted so as to represent the true state o( affairs at 
the present time oi' deepest business depression and general 
want all around us. 

But before diving into the cold facts and figures of the 
census report-, two explanatory remarks must be indulged 
in. the first of which is about the reliability of the statistics. 
There is no doubt that the census enumerators endeavor to 
do right and procure their information in a careful manner; 
but it is customary for them to get it from the employers, 
not from the employes. This is proper as long as the 
formers' special interests are concerned ; it is improper. 
when the business of both classes, such as the wages paid,- 
the daily working hours, children's labor, and similar mat- 
ters are inquired into. In this latter case both parties 
should be heard, but as the word of the employer is always 
taken in preference to that of the worker, the census reports 
are. in fact, made up almost exclusively from the bo-- - 
statements and consequently dyed in the latters' favor. 

The reason why anybody should endeavor to falsify of- 
ficial statistics lies in the constant warfare between capital 
and Labor about the workers' remuneration for their work : 
in the unceasing collision between the transportation com- 
panies and the public about the rates and fores, and in the 
continuous haggling between the people as consumers, and 
the mining and industrial establishments as producers about 
the latters' products. Capital hides its true earnings in 
order to keep up a feigned justification for refusing to pay 
higlx-r wage-, to reduce their fares and freight rates, and to 
charge lower prices for their coal and manufactured goods. 
all under the plea that their profit- are too small to allow 
it. Labor suspects that these excuses are not true and 



16 A New Gospel of Labor. 

therefore grasps at every obtainable information about the 
true earnings of the members of the great industrial mining 
and transportation corporations, whose wealth seems steadi- 
ly to increase in the same ratio in which the poverty of the 
masses becomes deeper and more wide-spread. 

To evade this " prying into their private affairs," as the 
corporations call it, and to " protect " their financial inter- 
ests, they meet the census-enumerators' questions with falsi- 
fied statements or withold the requested information entire- 
ly, both of which means of " protecting capital " have been 
used in the census reports of 1880 in many instances. 
Thus the gold and silver mining industries furnish only a 
statement of the amount of their total outputs during the 
census year, keeping all the many other interesting things 
to be known about this important business entirely secret. 
In other equally prominent occupations, as for instance the 
fishery, and quarry business, the wages paid to the workers 
have not been stated, so that the incomes of neither the em- 
ployers nor the employes can be ascertained ; and in still 
other branches of work of national importance, as the coal- 
mining industry, into which the people demanded to obtain 
a closer insight and answers would have been enforced from 
the owners by the law, if not voluntarily given, the subter- 
fuge of falsehood has been resorted to in the most glaring 
manner, especially by the great corporations. 

In this manner numerous inaccuracies have found their 
way into the Census Compendium ; the amount of the in- 
vested capital has been exaggerated, worthless watered stock 
has been given in as cash, the wages paid to the employes 
and the time of their employment have been over-stated, 
the cost of the total products magnified, and similar devices 
used to hide the real income of the great industrial concerns 



A New Gospel of Labor. 17 

and to permit them to keep up their system of plundering 
through high prices the great masses of the people. If 
from these statistics which may be said to come out of the 
mouths of the employers deductions are made illustrating 

their own condition and that of their workmen, these deduc- 
tions are above the suspicion of being overdrawn in favor 
of the working classes and cannot be objected to by the rep- 
utatives of capital. 

The second explanation to be given refers to the manner 
how statistics about the social-economical condition of a 
people ought not. and how they ought to be applied. 

It is customary for those speaking and writing on this 
subject, to state the amount of money represented in the 
taxable property of the people of the United States and 
from the sum total and the number of souls of the popula- 
tion to calculate how much of the entire wealth, if distrib- 
uted in equal shares among all the inhabitants would come 
t>. each individual. Newspapers writers and spread-eagle 
orators call this the average national wealth per head, and 
indulge in no little boasting about the country's prosperity, 
if that average come to a high figure. 

But for the practical purpose of ascertaining the actual 

condition of a people, all such average calculations which 

include different classes representing the greatest wealth and 

the lowest degree of poverty arc worthies-; nay, less then 

that, they are deceiving. For they lead the people, through 

an apparently high rate of average national wealth, into a 

- ifety about their financial affairs which blinds 

inomica] evils and renders them in- 

iny efforts of solving the -nine. 

B l the multi-millionaire with hi- income of thou- 



18 A New Gospel of Labor. 

sands of dollars a day, and the millions of workmen who 
labor for a few hundred dollars a year there is an unfathom- 
able abyss which cannot be bridged over by any average- 
To find the actual wealth and degree of prosperity of a na- 
tion, the condition of each of its classes and especially of 
those forming the majority must be known. The poorer 
this majority, and the larger this poor majority is, the 
poorer and less prosperous is the nation. For, no matter if 
it possesses in its midst a number of millionaires, if the 
great majority of the people are poor, and cannot consume 
what they produce, production ceases and the nation be- 
comes unprosperous, while, vice versa, when the great 
masses of a people have a higher income, their consumptive 
power is increased, hence production increases, trade and 
industry thrive, the nation is prosperous and becomes 
wealthy, although it may not enjoy the luxury of having a 
single millionaire in the whole country. 

This then is the question to be investigated which is at 
the bottom of the whole labor problem, namely : How does 
the majority of our people live and thrive ? And the cen- 
sus reports of 1880 answer it as follows. 



CHAPTER II. 



The Income of the American Wage-Workers in a Pros- 
perous Year. 

Out of a population of 50,155,000 there were engaged in 
all classes of occupations 17,392,000 personsf — Census Com- 
pendium, Vol. II, pages 1345-1356.] upon whom the remain- 
ing 32,763,000 people, consisting of women, children and 
oli). onn old men, were dependent for a living. The occupied 
persons were either employers or workers, and about the in- 
come of the latter the statistics give the following data : 



BOUBCBOF NUMBBB TOTAL I ^ 



P< 



[KFOBMATIOH. BRANCH OF WORK. OF YEARLY _^ 

KNSUS " ■■KNDM-M WOBK'BS WAGES § g} g 



U_ 933 Mechanical A Manufacture.. •j.7:;j.."!»2 - «t47.!t.",:?.7<t.-, -:;i; 

[j— 1237 Mining coal A unprec'8 met. 220,475 71,992,602 827 

[1—1368 and Rep. No. ^Agricultural Laborers 3,335,930 857,178,210 197 

Farm labor & wages 

11—1252-53 Petroleum & Petro. Prod 21.346 11,942,592 559.50 

11—1640 ichers 236,107 55,808,61] 236.37 

n— 1311 and IX! • graphs 14,928 1,888,128 327.31 

1 1 i . ... Eta roads 418,957 195,350,013 L68.30 

II— 1268-69 8team Craft 68,843 25,982,185 im;.!i7 



r,044,178 - L,971,094,036!«280.00 



These are not all the wage-workers employed during the 
There were several more who were classified 
and whose Qumbers were stated, hut not their wag 



20 A New Gospel of Labor. 

They comprise — 

131,426 fishermen, 

39,723 quarry men, 

92,000 work in gold and silver mines, 

1,075,655 domestic servants, 

44,851 hair-dressers and barbers, 

109,000 hostlers and hotel employes, 

1,859,223 laborers, 

32,192 porters and laborers in warehouses. 

121,942 workers in laundries, 

353,444 clerks in stores, 

45,000 bartenders, 

177,586 draymen, teamsters and hackmen, 

60,070 sailors [merchant vessels], 

24,161 U. S. soldiers, marines and sailors, 

32,279 salesmen and saleswomen, 

53,491 hucksters and peddlers, 

and many others engaged in similai low-class work, among 
whom are included about 200,000 half-paupers [who work 
part of the time and are partly assisted by charities]. 

The number of these different workers is in round figures 
5 millions, and it can readily be seen, from the nature of 
their callings, that they are mostly [at least f of them, the 
fishermen, soldiers, servants, laborers, sailors, etc.,] of the 
lowest paid class of workmen, whose average y early pay 
would equal perhaps that of the agricultural laborers. But 
in order to avoid objections, they may be assumed to have 
had the same average income as the above enumerated 7 
millions, namely $280 for each individual per year. 

The total number and income of the wage- workers in- 
cluding the small bosses,, whose income was below $500 



A New Gospel'of Labor. 21 

and who have therefore been classified with the wage- 
workers, is then complete as follows: 

Total uumber of workers, 12,044,178, 
Total yearly income, 13,369,961,004, 

Income per annum for each person, $280.00. 

These incomes of the wage-workers were shared with them 
by their families, the entire number of whose mem hers 
must be obtained, in want Of specific figures, by proportion- 
ing the number of women and children in the entire popu- 
lation to the number of wage-workers. 

As stated before, there were 17,392,000 occupied persons 
upon whom 32,763,000 women and children depended for 
their support. This ratio applied to the 12,044.178 wage- 
worker- gives them 22,688,788 women and children, which 
number is, no doubt, too small, as the working classes are 
known to have larger families and less bachelors than the 
wealthy classes. But accepting the average stated as cor- 
then the entire number of working people and their 
families is swelled to 34,732,966, between whom the yearly 
of their supporters amounting to $3,369,961,004 must 
be divided, which give- to each of these 35 millions of men, 
w-unen and children a yearly income of $97.00, or for ev- 
ery day in the year, Sunday included, the sum of twenty- 
aix and one-half cents. 

With this income of 26| cents a day. during the prospi r- 
OUS year L880, thirty-five millions of Americans, which was 
more than a two-thirds majority of the entire population, 
had to procure three meals a day. pay rent, buy shoes and 
clothing for summer and winter, likewise fuel, cover the ex- 
penses of births, sickness and funerals, and pay for all the 
er many i >f lit'.'. 

Is it surprising in view of this fact, that there i- a labor- 
problem existing? that there is discontent breeding among 



22 A New Gospel of Labor. 

these people? For, however ignorant many of these 35 
millions are as to the exact causes of their poverty, they 
know from the constantly growing number of w T ealthy peo- 
ple who do not work but only scheme, that they, the work- 
ers who, through their large majority and productive labor, 
form the bone and sinew of the nation, who are its support- 
ers in peace and its main defenders in war, that they must 
grovel in the mire of poverty in order that out of their hard 
toil enormous profits may be drawn by others and million- 
aire fortunes built up which no human being could, ever, 
honestly earn. 

The objection will be raised against this 26J cents daily 
income, that the picture of the poverty of the working 
classes which it exhibits is overdrawn, because there are 
many individuals among them who receive higher wages, 
and salaries often reaching into the thousands of dollars a 
year. No doubt, there are many such well paid managers, 
superintendents, accountants, foremen and expert workmen 
among the wage workers ; but how many ? In the absence 
of statistics about the matter, experience must be resorted 
to, which teaches that there is hardly one out of 50 work- 
men so favored. Assuming however, in order to avoid all 
dispute, that one out of every 12 wage- workers be such a 
better-paid employe, then the whole number would be one 
million or, w T ith their wives and children, altogether three 
millions who form the aristocracy of the 35 millions of 
working people. 

But when it is considered that to every income which is 
above the average there must be one or more below it, it 
becomes apparent that, in reality, the condition of the re- 
maining 30 millions of persons is still worse than the 26 J 
cents daily income indicates ; and that there is a degree of 
poverty prevailing among the working classes which defies 



A New Gospel of Labor. *23 

description by .words or figures and must be seen in the 
Blums of the cities, and on the bankrupt farms of the coun- 
try, in the tenement-house homes of the sewing women, in 
the hovels of the agricultural laborers, and in the coal- 
miners' rickety shacks, in order to be believed ! 

And yet a low income is not the worst evil under which 
the workmen of this country suffer : there is another greater 
one which persecutes them, by day and night, and in compar- 
ison to which the starvation-income of 26 J cents a day for 
each member of the working classes seems to be a god-send 
and a blessing. 



CHAPTER III. 



The Increasing Curse of No Work for the Workers. 

The greatest evil under which the working classes of the 
United States have suffered during every business depres- 
sion of the last 20 years, and especially of late, is the con- 
stantly growing want of employment. This curse has in- 
vaded so many workingmen's homes, it has brought pover- 
ty and misery for years to so many millions of men, women 
and children, that it has become engraven in the very faces 
of the toilers in lines of care so cruelly deep as to make 
them painfully plain to be read by every unprejudiced 
person. 

And yet, the existence of this curse is constantly denied 
by the opponents of the labor element and by thoughtless 
people, so that it becomes necessary to prove it with figures 
and to turn the light of official statistics upon this, the dark- 
est phase of the workingmen's troubles. 

From the time that the United States has stepped into the 
ranks of independent nations it has been one of its accept- 
ed maxims of social economy, that there is an abundance of 
labor here for everybody who wants to work ; and the gates 
to its vast domains have, consequently, been thrown wide 
open to the working people of the world and kept so ever 
since. 



A Ni w Gospel of Labor. 25 

That maxim lias been true for many years. The gigantic 
extent of the country, embracing more territory than the 
continents of either Europe or Australia, made it possible 
that, continuously, new avenues of work and industry were 
opened up to the overflow-population of the Eastern States 
and to the immigration from the old-world countries. And 
the probability that these avenues could come to an end in 
the near future were, even short 25 years ago, not thought 
of by the people who were too busy in their chase after 
wealth to look into the future. 

Nor did up to that time, [of 25 years ago], anything show 
t<> tlu- superficial observer that the prosperity of the people 
of this country was threatened. No labor-troubles had yet 
appeared; strikes were of a local nature and not irequent; 
and the crises which used to happen, perhaps once in 20 
years, and to cause a momentary lull in the general business 
activity, were occasioned by financial errors ot the law- 
makers and not through want of work. But a change grad- 
ually set in. 

During the time from 1850 to 1870 an uncommonly large 
amount of wealth had been accumulated through the ex- 
ploitation of the gold-fields of California, the petroleum- 
wells of Pennsylvania, the fat contracts of the civil war, and 
the opening up of new territories by the Pacific railroads. A 
great deal of this wealth was used in new enterprises, so that 
in 1869 the whole country, a- far as not suffering from the 
consequ s I the rebellion, appeared like a vast work- 
shop, tin- noise of whose labor penetrated to almost all in- 
habited part- ot' the Earth, and attracted its workers, even 
the Mongols and Tartars from the heart of Asia, to our 

And yet. 'luring this busy period, in tie- leverish haste of 
its activity, tin- cancer of the labor-troubles showed thai it 



26 A New Gospel of Labor. 

had begun its attack; for only a few years later [1873-78] 
a business-stagnation set in, that made privation and pover- 
ty household guests in many a formerly comfortable home. 
The census and industrial statistics of Massachusetts for the 
year 1875 state [Vol. I, p. 211] that in that state alone there 
were 283,476 people supported or relieved by charities, mak- 
ing one supported person out of every 19 of the entire pop- 
ulation. From that national depression of business on, the 
evil of enforced idleness has steadily gained ground in a 
greater or smaller degree, according to times and circum- 
stances ; and the workless vagrant, the homeless maraud- 
ing tramp, formerly unknown in the United States, became 
henceforth a permanent class of its population. 

In the year 1879-'80 the times were again exceedingly 
good ; railroad building, factory-work, and farming being 
pushed in an unprecedented degree. But in that prosper- 
ous year the figures of the census-reports give striking 
proof of the decreasing opportunities of employment. 

The entire working population of the United States [Vol. 
II, p. 1343.] had increased during the decade of 1870-'80 
from 12J to 17J millions or at the rate of 39 per cent.; but 
the employment of adult male workmen who are the natu- 
ral supporters of the families of the working classes had not 
nearly kept step with this percentage. In the manufactur- 
ing and mechanical business [Vol. II, p.p. 928-929] the 
number of employed males over 16 years old had increased 
from 1,615,598 to 2,019,035, or 25 per cent., while the num- 
ber of working females over 15 years old had risen from 
323,770 to 531,639, or 64 per cent., and the employed 
children under 15 years old from 114,628 to 181,921, or 
58 J per cent.; so that in 1880 the places of 227,000 male 
workers were filled by 104,188 young girls and children. 

This apparent contradiction of a number of children tak- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 27 

ing the place of more than double as many workingmen is 
easily explained by the fact that, during the same 10 years, 
the machinery used in the same business had been enlarged 
to such an extent that the motive power had to be increased 
from 2 J millions horse power used in 1870 to 3f millions 
horse power used in 1880, or at the rate of 45J- per cent. 
\'ol. II, p. 1216]. And it was this machinery which had 
not only diminished the entire number of employes, but 
put children in the place of men who had either to "go on 
the tramp " looking for other employment, or, staying home, 
become paupers. 

But in order to fully understand this highly important 
matter, it is necessary to consider these figures more closely. 
One horse-power is equal to 6 men's labor ; the entire in- 
crease of 1,064,694 horse-power therefore represents the 
work of 6,388,170 men; and if the new machinery driven 
by this motive power is assumed to equal the same quanti- 
ty of human laltor [which is a low estimate], then it is seen 
that the increase of machinery and motive power from 1870 
to 1880, in the manufacturing and mechanical business of 
the United States was equal to the work of 12,776,000 work- 
men, while the increase of human workers numbered only 
403,000 men and 275,000 girls, women, and children. 

I )r to state the difference in the increase of both kinds of 
labor, the artificial machine-work, and that of the human 
workers, more exactly yet: In 1870 the machine work and 
motive-power employed represented 28,000,000 of men, 
while there wen- only 1,616,000 human workmen employed, 
a ratio of 17 to 1. In 1880 the machine-work equalled 41,- 
000,000 of men, while there were only 2,019.000 workmen 
employed, a ratio of 20 to 1. 

irroll D. Wright, U. S. Commissioner of Labor, furnishes 
the following astounding detail information on this subject 



28 A New Gospel of Labor. 

in his report on " Industrial Depressions " made to the Sec- 
retary of the Interior in 1886. [p.p. 80 to 87] : 

"In the manufacture of agricultural implements new ma- 
chinery has, during the past 15 years, in the opinion of 
some of the best manufacturers of such implements, dis- 
placed fully 50 per cent, of the labor formerly employed. 

" In the boot and shoe business the facts collected by the 
U. S. labor bureau show that on a certain kind of boots 
and shoes manufactured in Maine 1 man can do the work 
now which, 20 years ago, required 10 men. 

"In the broom industry one large concern in 1879 em- 
ployed 17 skilled workmen to manufacture 500 dozen 
brooms per week. In 1885 the same firm with 9 men and 
the use of machinery turned out 1200 dozen of brooms per 
week. 

" In the cotton goods industry a large establishment in 
New Hampshire has, during the last 10 >. years, with im- 
proved machinery, reduced human labor 50 per cent. 

" In the use of improvements and inventions during the 
past ten or fifteen years in hammers used in the manufac- 
ture of steel, there has been a displacement of employes in 
the proportion of nearly ten to one, or of 90 per cent, of the 
workmen. 

" In the Hocking valley, mining coal by machines is ex- 
perimental at present. In one place, however, mining ma- 
chines employing about 160 men produce in a month's 
work about the same amount of coal that 500 men will pro- 
duce by hand, working the same number of days. 

" A well known firm in New Hampshire engaged in the 
manufacture of paper states that, by the aid of machinery, 
it produces three times the quantity of paper with the same 
number of employes that it did 20 years ago. 

" In the manufacture of saws, experienced men consider 



.1 Ni w Gospel of Labor. 29 

that there has been a displacement of 3 men out of 5, or 60 
per cent. Ten years ago grinding saws was done by hand, 
n«»w it is done by machinery. 

•• In woollen goods, in the carding department, modern 
machinery has reduced human labor 33 per cent; in the 
spinning department 50 per cent., and in the weaving de- 
partment 25 per cent. Thk has been done during the last 
>/ears only." 

On page 261 of his report Mr. Wright writes: 

•• Twelve years ago a blast furnace producing 50 tons of 
pig iron in 24 hours was regarded as a good furnace. Now 
a blast furnace produces as much as 200 tons in the same 
time. This exemplifies the tendency to increase the means 
<>f production far beyond the needs of consumption, and 
this increase, in the great family of producing nations, has 
far in excess of the increase of population." 

And in summing up these observations, the Commissioner 
of Labor say- : 

"Many other features of manufactory might be cited, 
were the facts necessary for the illustration of this topic. 
In box-making, in all the processes of the manufacture of 
books and newspapers, in jewelry, and in fact in nearly every 
department of production, statements as positive and emphatic 
as fltoxc made for the industries examined might be secured." 

In the face of the reckless enormous growth of steam- 
power and machine-work and the rapid exclusion of human 
labor, a- proven beyond doubt by these facts and figures, 
the question is not any more whether the chances of em- 
ployment for the workingmen decrease : but it only remains 
to be investigated, how long it will be, until machine- 
work Bball stop all further employment of workingmen in 
industrial pursuits, until child-labor shall take the place of 
the now employed hand-work of the male adults, and how 



30 A New Gospel of Labor. 

long it will be, until the millions of American mechanical 
and factory-workers, having become superfluous in the la- 
bor-market, shall sink with their families into a condition of 
poverty and helplessness, of which even the starving and 
homeless pauper proletarians of the big cities of Europe and 
Asia can hardly form an apt illustration, because the pater- 
nal hands of their governments provide, if not loaves, at 
least crumbs for their starving unemployed, while under the 
United States government of the people, by, and for the peo- 
ple, the doctrine of paternalism is condemned by the ruling- 
powers of the country as " unrepublican," and supplanted 
by the cold, iron, uncharitable motto : " Help your- 
self!" 

How fast the workingmen of the United States approach 
this condition, in some of the most important branches of 
industrial work, which enjoy even the special benefit of 
high -tariff protection, can be learned from the census re- 
ports of both 1870 and 1880. 

As stated before, the number of workmen looking for oc- 
cupation had, during the decade of 1870 to '80, increased 
at the rate of 39 per cent.; that is, where in 1870 one hun- 
dred men had found work, 139 expected to get employment 
in 1880. Did they find it? 

1. In the manufacture of cotton-goods [C. C, Vol. II, p. 
1216,] the chances of employment had increased from 135,- 
000 in the year 1870 to 174,000 in the year '80, or only 27 
per cent, instead of 39 per cent., leaving 13,500 workers 
without an opportunity to work. But extra machinery had, 
in the same period of time, been emplo}' r ed to such an ex- 
tent as to require an increase of motive power to the amount 
of 129,464 horse-power, or at a rate of increase of 88f per 
cent, [equaling the work of 1,553,568 men]. 

2. In. the woollen goods industry [C. C, Vol. II, p. 1216] 



A New Gospel of Labor. 31 

the chances o( employment had increased from 77.S70 in 

1870 to 84,504 in L880, or only 11 per cent, instead of 39 
per rent., leaving 21,981 workers without an opportunity to 

work. But extra machinery had. in the same period of 
time, beeo employed to such an extent as to require an in- 
crease of motive power to the amount of 21,406 horse-pow- 
er, or at a rate of increase of 2d$ per cent., [equaling the 
work of 256,872 men]. 

_. In the sawed lumber industry the chances of employ- 
ment had decreased from 149.997 in 1870 to 147,956 in '80, a 
decrease ^t' 1 percent, instead of an increase of 39 per cent.. 
Leaving 60,539 workers without an opportunity to work. 
But extra machinery had, in the same period of time, been 
employed to such an extent as to require an increase of 
motive power to the amount of 180,263 horse-power, or at a 
rate <>f increase of 28J per cent., [equaling the work of 
2,163,156 men]. 

4. In the manufacture of flour and gristmill products 
the chances of employment had decreased from 58,448 in 
the year 1870 to 58,407 in '80, a slight decrease instead of 
an increase of 39 per cent., leaving 22,835 workers without 
an opportunity to work. But extra machinery had, in the 
same period of time, been employed to such an extent as to 
require an increase of motive power to the amount of 194,- 
."1") horse-power, or at a rate of increase of 33f per cent., 
[equaling the work of 2,334,180 men]. 

These are not isolated instances of the decrease of empl< 
ment in prominent branches of industrial work, but numer- 

- similar ones can be found in the Census Compendium 

of 1880, so that, notwithstanding the "largely increased 

djer of employes in other industries, [mostly in the new 

•mire number of workmen employed in 1880 in 

all industrial and mechanical work falls behind the per- 



A New Gospel 0/ Labor. 



centage of increase of the total number of workmen in the 
United States by 227,000, as shown in the commencement 
of this chapter. 

Nor is this deficiency of the chances of employment lim- 
ited to industrial work ; in agricultural pursuits the want 
in positions for farm-laborers [C. C, Vol. II, p. 1368] 
amounted to nearly 650,000, or at a rate of over 20 per 
cent, less than the increase of the number of men looking 
for work, so that in both, the farming, and the industrial and 
mechanical business, the year 1880 found neaily a million 
less chances of employment than there were men in the 
country looking for them. 

What has become of the men so displaced by machinery 
and children's labor is told in the population tables of the 
census reports [C. C, Vol. 1, p. p. 4-6]. They state that the 
entire population of the United States during the decade of 
1870 to '80 has increased at the rate of 30 per cent., but 
that in the old states the population had not nearly increas- 
ed in the same ratio. 

In Massachusetts the increase was 22 3-10 per cent. 
In Pennsylvania " " " 21 6-10 " 

In Illinois " " " 21 1-10 " 

In Ohio " " " 19 9-10 " 

In Indiana " " " 17 7-10 " 

In Delaware " " " 17 1-5 

In New York " " " 15 9-10 « 

In Connecticut " " "15 8-10 " 

In New Hampshire ' " " 9 

In Maine " " " 3 1-2 " 

In Vermont " " " 1-2 

Translated into words the meaning of these figures is, 
that there had not been work enough for the increasing pop- 
ulation of these states which form the center of industry 



A New Gospel of Labor. 33 

and agriculture of the United States, and thai the superflu- 
ous people had emigrated elsewhere to find employment 
and new homes. The same census table indicates where 
they had gone to. 

In California the population had increased 54 3-10 per cent 
In Arkansas " u " " 65 " " 

In Minnesota " " M u 77 1-2 '' " 

In Montana - - u u 90 1-10 " " 

In Oregon " " u « 92 1-5 " " 

In T< - - ' " " u 94 2-5 u -' 

In Wyoming ' " - " 127 9-10 " " 

In Kan- - " " " " 173 310 " " 

In Washington 4 - " " 213 1-2 " « 

In Nebraska - " " " 267 8-10 " « 

In Arizona • " « " 318 " " 

In Colorado M u w " 387 4-10 " " 

In Dakota u " " " 853 " " 

Millions of the people of the Eastern and Middle States 
had, eager to escape the dreaded want of employment, gone 
to work in the Western States and Territories as only the 
American people with their indomitable push and feverish 
energy are able to do. They cut millions of homesteads 
out of the wilderness; they raked the mountain-sides for 
precious and unprecious metals and established hundreds of 
mines; tiny built up thousands of new villages, towns and 
cities; they organized a number oi new thriving states with 
hundreds of counties; and all this work was crowded into 
as many rs only, as in other countries it would have 
taken centuries to perform it. And yet the census reports 
tell us that in those prosperous, busy days of 1880, even 
these new si s tnd territories could not furnish em- 
ployment enough tor those who flocked there, as. tor in- 
1 l . Vol. II. p. 1346] the states of Kansas and 



34 A New Gospel of Labor. 

Nebraska, and the territories of Arizona, Idaho, Montana, 
Washington, and Wyoming. , 

And only six years later [in 1886], the Commissioner of 
the U. S. Labor Bureau reported that there had been in the 
year 1885 in the agricultural, transportation, mining, and 
manufacturing business about 1,000,000 of workers out of 
employment, a number which, he says in his report, is* 
rather too large than too small; while some of his promi- 
nent employes frankly confessed that they had reason to be- 
lieve their estimate to be far below the actual number of 
the unemployed, but it had been modified in order '" not to 
alarm the people." 

This was the case in 1885, while the figures previously 
quoted from the census report referred to the year 1880. 
In those days the national domain had not yet been ex- 
hausted, but the best kind of government land could easily 
be obtained by the homestead and pre-emption laws in all 
the Western States, and thus many thousands of the unem- 
ployed were drawn off from the labor market. 

To-day the situation is almost incomparably worse. Not 
only has the number of the wage-workers been increased 
since the last ten years by at least 3 millions of labor-seek- 
ing men, while machine-work and steam-power has lowered 
the chances of employment by the hundreds of thousands ; 
but the outlet of the workless to the public lands has been 
reduced to a minimum. Not as if the United States did 
not have any more unsettled land ; but what there is of it, 
either requires considerable capital to make it fit for culti- 
vation, or it is so far removed from roads, schools, markets, 
and from all civilized life, as to render it unavailable as the 
home of a family. 

Nothing characterizes this scarcity of available land for 
the home-seeker better than the disgusting and pitiable 



.1 V Gospel of Labor. 35 

scenes enacted during the past few years at the opening of 

the Oklahoma district, a Sioux reservation in Dakota, and the 
Cherokee strip, at each of which occasions from 50,000 to 
100,000 male and female home-seekers stood at the reserva- 
tion-lines for days and nights, in rain and sunshine, in the 
cold and in the burning heat, without shelter, food and 
drink, ready to break their own or their fellow-men's limbs 
or neck in the race for a piece of land whereon to build a 
home and to make a living. 

There is another indication which strongly shows the in- 
creasing scarcity of opportunities to obtain employment by 
the people of the United States, and that is the eagerness 
with which schemes to annex adjoining or even far-off coun- 
tries are taken up by the public press and loudly re-echoed 
by millions of people who would not hesitate a moment, in 
their search for homes and employment to acquire by peace- 
able means or war Canada, Cuba, Hayti, Samoa, and the 
Sandwich Islands, it only permitted by our national govern- 
ment to do so. 

And yet. in the lace of this rapidly decreasing chance of 
work or homes on public land for the great masses of the 
American people, the ports of the United States on all of its 
shore Lines, on the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Pacific, are 
alive with ships unloading the superfluous population of 
Europe and Asia, immigrants for whom there is no need 
here, whatever, who as soon as they have landed, help to 
make the chances of employment still less for the resident 
workmen, cause their wages to be lowered, become settlers 
and squatters on the public domains and in many cases, 
after a short residence only, objects of public charity; while 
the Leaders of our political parties, the so-called statesmen 
oft. i _ -- re neither courageous enough to 

-t<>p this injurious immigration, nor possessed of a sufficient 



W A New Gospel of Labor. 

knowledge of the principles of social-economy to give the 
people the needed relief against the evils which the un- 
ceasing flooding of the labor-market with foreign workers 
helps to inflict upon the working population. 

These then are summed up in a few words the main evils 
now causing the discontent of the working classes. 1. The 
wage- workers compelled to live on an average income per 
person of 26J cents per day which is insufficient for the 
demands of the most unpretentious kind of civilized life, and 
cannot but breed poverty and pauperism among the great 
masses of the people, 2. The constant decrease of employ- 
ment for a steadily growing population, and the steady low- 
ering of wages which accompanies every further stage of 
this decrease. 

To these greater evils come smaller ones which help to 
fill the measure of the workers' misery. Trusts and monop- 
olies which control the necessaries of life increase steadily, 
and raise the price of the very things that the poorest can- 
not get along without. Relief through legislative means 
is less to be hoped for from year to year because of the ig- 
norance of our legislators and the ever-growing influence of 
the millionaire-trusts and similar great capitalistic combi- 
nations. And thus, while the present time is darkened 
for the working classes with poverty and misery, their fu- 
ture and that of their children after them looks black and 
dismal as despair. 

The thought that the condition of the wage-workers de- 
scribed in this and the preceding chapters was, in a prosper- 
ous year, [1880], that of the majority of a people inhabit- 
ing one of the finest countries in the world which, with 
its immense area and wonderfully rich resources, is capable 
of supporting in affluence not only 50 but 500 millions of 
people, must cause the patriotic, the humane observer to be- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 3*3 

come saddened and alarmed, when he considers what that 
condition may be now in the midst of a great national in- 
dustrial depression ; and he turns for relief to that other 
great class of producers, the agricultural workers in field 
and farm, the backbone of every civilized nation. For, if 
anywhere, it ought to be found with the farmers of the 
United States who. free from the oppressions of privileged 
noblemen, and not burdened with taxes for the support of 
myal courts or of an enormous army, should surely offer a 
more pleasant picture of their condition than the starving 
wage-workers in shops and factories. But the following 
chapter will teach that such expectations are vain, and that 
all the producers of the country are suffering, if not from 
the same evils, from similar ones, all of which scatter pov- 
erty and pauperism broadcast over the land. 



CHAPTER IV. 



The Condition of the American Farmers. A National 

Tragedy. 

There were in the census year 1879-'80, in the United 
States, 4,225,945 planters, farm owners, and renters, who had 
in their possession 4,008,907 farms, containing 536,081,835 
acres of land. [C. C, Vol. 1, p. 685.] To find the income 
of this class of producers it is necessary, as no fair average 
can be drawn between the owners of the big and small 
farms, to divide their whole number into three classes, the 
first one to embrace the great farms having 500 acres and 
more faverage 955 acres] ; the second class to include the 
middle-class farms above 100 and below 500 acres [average 
192J acres]; the third class to contain all the small farms 
having less than 100 acres [average 49J acres.] 

The entire farm products [sold, consumed and on hand] 
of all the farms together for the year 1879 to '80 had a val- 
ue of $2,212,541,000. From this amount are to be deduct- 
ed the following items representing the cost of production, 
as given by, or calculated from, the census-report of 1880 
and the Statistical Report No. 4 on wages of farm 
labor issued by the United States Department of Ag- 
riculture. 



A N&jd Gospel of Labor. 39 

Hired help ; 3,335,930 persons (a 5197 per year - - 1657,178,120 
Cost of repairing and building fences ----- 77,763,473 

Fertilizer used during the year - 28,586,397 

10 per cent, wear and tear on all farm machinery - - 40,652,105 
5 per cent, wear and tear un all farm buildings (estimated) 100,000,000 

Total cost of production - 1904,180,095 

This amount deducted from the above stated value of all 
farm products left to the 4J millions of farmers a total in- 
come o( $1,308,360,915 which includes, however, the inter- 
►n the capital invested in the entire agricultural busi- 
ness. If this total income be divided at equal rates per 
acre among all the farm-owners and renters, the following 
results are obtained : 

1. The 110,210 owners of the 104,550 great farms con- 
taining 99.846,000 acres had a total yearly profit of $243,- 
659,100; which makes for each farmer of this class a total 
income of §2211 per year. 

2. The 1,787,801 owners of the 1,695,983 middle-class 
farms containing 326,713,278 acres, had a total yearly profit 
of $797,180,398; which makes for each farmer of this class 
a total income of $446 per year. 

3. The 2,327.944 owners of the 2,208,374 small farms, 
containing 109,522,557 acres, had a total yearly profit of 
$267,235,039 ; which makes for each farmer of this class a 
totai income of $115 per year. 

Calculating the income of each member of these classes 
by the day. the great-class farmer had an income per 
diem of $6.06 : the middle-class farmer had an income 
of 11.24 a day ; and the small-class farmer enjoyed 
life on a daily income ol 32 cents, out of which to support 
himself and his family, buy groceries, shoes and clothing, 
light and fuel, pay the doctor, druggist and for a newspaper, 
contribute to the church and to charitable purposes, pay 
fire insurance, state, school and county tax, and last and 



40 A New Gospel of Labor. 

worst of all — interest ! or if he failed to keep up the latter, 
to lose the farm and home, and become a laborer, tramp, or 
pauper. 

Indeed, the picture of prosperity which many people ex- 
pect to find in the country among the farmers, is in fact a 
picture of misery which fulty equals the condition of the 
wage-workers in the shops and factories of the city. The 
facts and figures here quoted announce to the people of the 
United States in unmistakable terms, that their middle and 
small classes of farmers, the yeomanry of the country, are 
doomed to be wiped out of existence. 

They cannot, at the low price of farm products generally 
prevailing except in extraordinarily good times, compete 
with the machine-work employed, and the transportation- 
facilities and cheaper management enjoyed by the great- 
farm owners. This competition drives the middle and 
small class farmers gradually into debt, from which the 
former may, through good luck, poor living and hard work, 
succeed in extricating himself; but to which debt the small- 
farmer more or less rapidly succumbs. A few figures ex- 
tracted from the census reports will illustrate this better than 
words can do it. 

The total capital invested in 1880 in all the farms of the 
United States amounted to $12,000,000,000. Dividing this 
sum in equal shares per acre among the farms according to 
their acreage, the capital invested in each average 
great farm was $20,295, the interest on which, at the rate of 
6 per cent, per annum, was 1217. This sum deducted from 
$2211 the income of the great farm-owner, would have left 
him $994 per year to live on. So that if he was in debt to 
the full value of his farm, he could easily pay his interest, 
live tolerably well, and have a few hundred dollars per an- 
num left to redeem his debt. Or if he had no debt, he could 



A Neu <;>>.<j><] of Labor. 41 

live comfortably and save the interest on his invested capi- 
tal to bny more land or invest it otherwise. 

The middle-class farmer had an average capital of $409.3 

invested in his farm, the interest on which, at the rate of () 
per cent per annum, was $"24o. This sum deducted from 
the owner's yearly income of $44(>, left him only $201 per 
year, on which he could not live decently with his family, 
so that. :i' he was not in debt, he had to use the interest on 
his invested capital to make the ends meet. Or, if he was 
mortgaged, he had to live like a beggar, work himself, his 
family, and his help almost to death, and needed good luck 
besides to succeed in paying off his debt. But if, in order 
to do that, he had to .-ell part of his land, and thereby to 
step into the class of small-farmers, then his next indebted- 
ne>> was his ruin. 

For each small farmer had an average invested capital of 
$1054, the interest od which, at the rate of six per cent, 
was $63. This sum deducted from the owner's income of 
>11"). Left him only $52 per year, on which he could not, 
with his family, live decently, indecently, or otherwise, but 
had to starve; so that if he were in debt, he could pay 
neither debt nor interest and when the banker's patience 
expired, which generally happens when the mortgage is 
doe, he fell into the hands of the sheriff. And if he were 
not in dcl-t. he could not avoid, at an income of 32 cents 
a day for the support of himself and family, to get into 
debt sooner or later, and fall into the hands of the banker 
and sheriff anyway. 

It is customary, in looking for the cause of this deplora- 
ble condition of the farmers, to hold the money-loaner, the 
banker, responsible therefor; but that is unjust. The farm- 
ers' trouble as well a- that of all the small business-men 
emanates from the present system of production which al- 



42 A New Gospel of Labor. 

lows capital to be accumulated through trusts and corpora- 
tions in the hands of a few. In other countries this concen- 
tration is checked by public opinion and legal restrictions, 
while in the United States it has been fostered by both, the 
law and the desire of the people, and, therefore, carried to 
its extremes, giving lull sway to all its evil consequences. 

Hence, concentrated capital takes the lead in every branch 
of business, in transportation, industry, and agriculture, 
and becomes the natural enemy of the small business-man 
everywhere. It controls all means of transportation, in- 
cluding telegraphs and telephones, and charges the small 
business-man exorbitant rates. It organizes monopoly-trusts 
and oppresses the retail-dealer as well as the consumer with 
high prices. It opens up shops and factories, farms and 
mines, wherever it may be profitable, with large means, in 
opposition to the business-man with smaller capital who is 
by the sharp competition soon driven into difficulty and 
debt. 

Then, in his hour of need, the small merchant, manufac- 
turer, or farmer applies to the banker who, through the 
iron-rule of interest and the inexorable mortgage-law, soon 
finishes the job of bankrupting the small producer. 

The rapidity with which this proceeding goes on among 
the farmers is proven by facts from the Census Compendium 
that are of an alarming nature. During the ten years from 
1870 to '80 there had been wiped out of existence no less 
than 145,543 small farms of less than 50 acres each, mak- 
ing 14,554 every year, or no less than 40 of these victims to 
the ruinous competition of concentrated capital every day, 
week-day and Sunday, for the whole ten years. [C. C, Vol. 
I, p. p. 650-651-652]. 

What has become of them ? On the following page the 
census report states, that during the same ten years the 



A Nea Gospel of Labor. 43 

farms containing from 500 to 1000 acres had increased at 

the rate of 379 |>cr cent., ami the farms of more than 1000 

acres at the rate of 668 per cent., swallowing up every one 

those bankrupt small farms and ready for many more. 

This was. it must be remembered, the condition of the 
farmers in 1880 in the most prosperous times. What may 
it be to-day. in the hard time- iA' 1893 and '94, when prices 
for all farm-products are lower than usual and the markets 
over-filled because millions of our working people in the 
cities are out of work and money, and unable to consume 
what the farmers have raised? 

It was a bloody tragedy, when the English Lords of the 
half-barbaric middle ages battled for 250 years to drive with 
fire and sword the English yeomanry, the flower of their 
nation, out of their small farmer-homes, in order to turn 
the country into 1000 acres pastures and farms; and En- 
glish historians are unanimous in branding the perpetrat- 
or- of that wholesale crime with the stamp of infamy. 

And yet that tragedy is only a small affair and a 
clumsy job, when compared to the swift, thorough, and 
smooth manner in which, in our time of high civilization, 
in this great republic, concentrated capital turns, with full 
sent of the law and with the assistance of the law-offi- 
every year armies of small business-men and farmers 
out of their shops and homes for no other purpose than to 
increase the wealth of a few at the cost of millions of hard- 
working, law abiding men. women, and children, whose on- 
ly crime is their poverty ! 

And that is, what troubles the American farmer! 



CHAPTER V. 



How the Low Income of the Working Classes Affects 
the Whole People.— How, Through the Anarchy 
of Production, Hard Times are Made.— And How 
the People of the United States Get Through an 
Industrial Depression. — A Tale of Man's Barbar- 
ous Inhumanity to Man. 



UNDER-CONSUMPTION. 

It is very probable that the averages drawn, in the fore- 
going chapters, from the statistical data in order to obtain 
the income of the individual wage-worker and farmer are 
doubted, and objected to by a number of people. These 
doubters include two kinds of persons ; those, whose inter- 
ests it is to keep the income of the working people down, 
and who, therefore, do not want to know the truth nor wish 
others to know it; and those, who have never taken or 
never had the time and opportunity to examine into this 
subject, and who are unwilling to believe, that what so 
many times they have heard or read about the superior con- 
dition of the American workingmen and farmers, has since 
years ceased to be true. 

While, probably, nothing can be said to overcome the ob- 



A A' ( , ispel of Labor. 45 

jections made by the first class, the doubts of the others can 
be dispelled, and they may easily be convinced that the 
condition of the producing classes of the United States is 
fully as low as has, in the previous chapters, been shown 
by nivans ot the calculation o\' their average incomes. The 
census statistics relative to the national consumption and 
production furnish this iniormation, and as it can be used 
- riven, without drawing anv averages from the same, it 
must be considered indisputable evidence that sets all 
doubt- at rest. 

The higher or lower money value of the yearly produce 
of a country is, generally, taken as an index of its greater 
or -mailer degree of prosperity. But alone, for itself, such 
an indicator is deficient. As a merchant or other business- 
man, to be prosperous, needs not only a full stock of goods, 
but also a sufficient and constant number of buyers, so that 
iu- may dispose of his goods, live on the profits, and be able 
t" lay in fresh supplies, — in the same manner a nation, to 
be prosperous, must have a ready market and a sufficient 
number of consumers who will absorb her vast yearly pro- 
ducts, so that her people may produce again next year, and 
do so at an increasing rate, in order to keep step with the 
increase of population. 

In former years the market for an industrial nation could 
1m- found, to a great extent, in foreign countries; as, for ex- 
ample, England and Belgium have, for many years during 
the present and previous centuries, furnished the supplies 
for the markets of Europe Asia, and America. This has 
D changed with the gradual growth of industrial work in 
31 all the important civilized countries and with the 
adoption of protective tariffs, until, at the present time, ev- 
ery nation produces principally for the home-market, and 
depends mostly upon her own people as buyers and con- 



46 A New Gospel of Labor. 

sumers of her national products. This is, particularly, the 
case in the United States, where, in the census-year 1880, 
the exports did not amount to more than about 7 per cent, 
of the value of the entire national production and were, 
within $167,684,000, balanced by the imports. 

And as the people have, ever since the civil war, enjoyed 
an exceedingly high protective tariff which, according to 
the teachings of so many of the leading American states- 
men, has been enacted and kept in operation for the special 
benefit of the wage workers and farmers, it is to be expected 
that the relation between the national productive and con- 
sumptive power had been kept in view by our law and tar- 
iff-makers, especially in the year 1879-'80 when the just 
passed industrial depression of 1873 to '78 had very plain- 
ly told that there was something extremely rotten in the 
industrial affairs of the country. 

The value of the total products of the United States, as 
sold by the owners oi the factories, mines, and farms, was 
in the census-year 1879-'80, as follows: 



Source of Statistical In- 
formation. 



Branches of Business. 



Cen. Comp. Vol II, p 928 Mechanical and manufacturing products.. 

" " " II, p 1238 Coal and non-precious metals 

" " " II, p 1224 Quarry product 

" II, p 1249 Petroleum 

" " il II, v 1253 Oils and products of petroleum 

" " " II, p 1403 Fishery product 

" " " I, p 685jFarm products 



Total 



Value of 
Products. 



$ 5,369,579,191 
143,894,832 
18,356,055 
24,000,000 
43,705,218 
43,046,053 
2,212,541,000 



S 7,855,122,349 



As this was the price at which the goods were sold to the 
wholesalers or turned over to the commission merchants 
whence they got into the hands of the retail dealers, the 
profits of these middlemen betw r een the producers and con- 
sumers must be added to it, also the cost of transportation, 
and a certain amount for the cost of telegraphing, and 



A New Gospel of Labor. 47 

telephoning, [which latter two items have, however, been 
left blank ior want of any information on the subject]. 
The producers' price is therein- increased in the following 

manner : 



Detailed Cost of National Production of 1880, at Retail Price 



Source of Statistical In- 
formation. Branches of Business. 



Val. of prod- 
ucts & mid- 
dlemen's 

profits. 



See last table Price charged by manufacturers and pro- 

ducers....: % 7,855,122,351 

Wholesale and commission merchants 

profit estimated at 20 per cent, of the to- 1 

tal manufacturers' price, making $1,371,. 

024,470. from which is to be deducted $167,- 

681.000 as the surplus of the exports over 

the imports, leaving a total wholesale 

profit <>f 1,403,340,470 

Retail dealers profit, estimated at 25 p. ct. 

of the price of the products as they leave 

the wholesale and commission mer- 

c.hant<" hands, amounting to j 2,777,538,846 

Oen.Oomp. Vol II p 12651 Railroad transportation freight) 416,145,758 

Cen. Oomp. Vol U, p 12M Steamboat transportation (freiht) 25.451,404 

Cen. Comp. Vol II, p 1303 Canal transportation (freiget) 4,558,620 

Telegraphing Not known.. 

Telephoning Not known.. 

"\"7/."!."\7."""""""!""""! Re'taU'price'of'^ $12,482,137,449 



At this price the production of the census-year had to be 
consumed by the population of 50J millions. To learn 
whether they did so, it must be ascertained how much thcy 
could consume, how much their income was which they 
could spend in the buying of these products ; in other 
words, the extent of the consumptive power of the people 
most be examined into, for which purpose the statements of 
the census-reports previously quoted must be repeated. 
They are interesting and significant enough to bear being 
read twice : 



48 A New Gospel of Labor. 

Income Table of All Wage-WorKers and Small & Middle.Class Farmers 



BRANCH OF WORK. 



Mechanical and factory work 

Mining coal and unprecious metals 

Agricultural labor, 

Petroleum business 

Teachiug school 

Telegraphs 

Railroads 

Steamboats 

Domestic and otber labor, sailors and soldiers. 

Middle class farm owners 

Small class farm owners 



Number of Yearly 
workers, i Income. 



2,732, 

220, 

3.335, 

21, 

236, 

14, 

418, 

63, 

5,000. 

1,787, 

2,327! 



592 $ 

475 j 
930! 
346] 
107 

928 
057 
843 
000 
S01 
044 



16,1.59,923 



947,953,795 

71,992,502 

657,178,210 

11,942,592 

55,808,611 

4,886,128 

195,350,013 

25,982,185 

,398,866,968 

797,180,398 

267,235,039 



$ 4,434,376,441 



These 16 1-6 millions of people who include all the 
workers for wages and salaries, the business : men with less 
than $500 yearly income, and the small and middle class 
farmers, had to support 30,439,277 women and children, 
so that the total amount of $4,434,376,441 was the year's 
income of 46,599,200 men, women, and children. 

It is true that this sum does not include the extra income 
which a limited number of these people, perhaps one-tenth 
of them, had from other sources, such as house-rents or in- 
terest from small amounts of capital owned by them. But 
this omission is amply made good by not subtracting from 
the stated total income the money saved or invested in land, 
lots, or houses by, undoubtedly, many members of these 
classes of the population. And the above given sum repre- 
sents, therefore, the consumptive power of these 46 J mil- 
lions of people as nearly as it can be obtained from official 
statistics or any other data, being, if anything, too large 
rather than too small. 

The remaining 3,555,800 people consisted of 1,232,077 
owners of mines, banks, railroads, large class farms, fac- 
tories, and other industrial establishments, of doctors, law- 
yers, pieachers, merchants, army and navy officers, of all 
public officials above the rank of clerks, and of the fami- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 49 

ly members of these people who form the moneyed class and 
its principal adherents. 

The income of most of the members of this small but 
highly important part of the population is unknown, the 
sus-reports giving but very little information about it. 
But what there is of it indicates that the income of the 
entire class amounted to, at least, $4,000,000,000, and 
probably to double that sum or even more. It matters 
little, for the purposes of the present investigation, which 
of these amount- is the more correct one. 

[f the different items so far obtained be recapitulated and 
put together, these main facts become obvious: 

1. The total production oi the country in 1880, at its 
retail price, ready to be consumed by the people amounted 

112,510,159,456. 

2. Tii entire income or consumptive power of 46,599,- 
200 people, [the working and the middle classes], being 93 
per cent, of the entire population, summed up during the 
whole year to $4,434,376,441. 

3. The income or consumptive power of the remaining 
3,555,800 people, [the moneyed class], being 7 percent, of 
the entire population, was from $4,000,000,000 to §8,000,- 

>,000. 

What do these figures teach ? They show that, in the 
prosperous year 1880, ninety-three per cent, of the entire 
pie, 46J out of 50J millions, could consume only one- 
third of the year's production, because that was as for as 
their whole income could reach. At the same time the re- 
maining 3] millions of wealthy people could not consume 
the other two-thirds of the production, because their num- 
ber was too small to do so; for it is apparent that 3| mil- 
Lions of persons could not use up in one year twice as much 
merchandise of all kinds, coal, ore, and farm-produce, as 
I6j millions of people, unless they had bought the goods to 



50 A New Gospel of Labor. 

give them away or destroy them, which is, of course, out of 
the <juestion. 

But supposing that these 3| millions actually did con- 
sume as much as half of the other population, or as 23J 
millions of people, [which is surely too high an estimate], 
then the consumption of the whole population would have 
amounted to $6,651,564,661, a sum which is only a trifle 
more than half the total yearly production, and still left 
$6,000,000,000 worth of goods of all kinds unconsumed on 
the nation's market at the end of the year. 

Thus r the consequence of too small an income of the 
great masses of the people, and the concentration of too 
much wealth in the hands of a small class, had reduced the 
nation's consumption to half its productive power ; a mis- 
proportion which could not fail to stop work in shop, mine, 
and field, to cause a business-stagnation, and to invite the 
pestilence of hard times, which had disappeared in 1878, to 
again visit the country. But before examining how the 
conflict between the people's consumption and production 
did destroy the prosperity prevailing in 1880, it is necessa- 
ry to fully understand the prime cause of this abnormal 
economical condition. 



OVER-PRODUCTION. 

It is not sufficient to know what the above stated figures 
teach, that the difficulty of the situation arose from the fact 
that the great bulk of the national income was possessed by 
only a limited number of persons, leaving the overwhelming- 
majority of the people unable to consume their proportion- 
ate share of the production. But the question offers itself, 
how this great income, this constantly flowing stream of 



.1 Ni w Gospel of Labor. 51 

wealth, has been turned from its natural channels, and got 
into the control and possession of the few members of the 
small moneyed class. 

The popular answer is: "Through greed and the selfish 
ambition to become richJ" And there is truth in it, but 
not the whole, the exact truth. The principal cause lies not 
in the vices or actions of a few individuals, but in the pres- 
ent industrial system or mode of production which does not 
aim. as it should do, to produce in order to supply the wants 
of the people, but which has been created for the purpose 
of bringing to the capitalistic employers big profits, an end- 
less accumulation of wealth, at the cost of the working 
classes and of the masses of the people. 

Umortunately, this system has been in use by all the 
civilized nations so long, [about 400 years], that most peo- 
ple, not knowing its artificial character, and ignorant of the 
fact that other systems have ever existed before, consider 
the present one the natural way of production the world 
over, and patiently submit to the evils which it inflicts up- 
on them. Hence, those who gain by it are allowed to carry 
it out to its utmost limits; and what that means can be 
l.-arnt from the outcome of the consumption and production 
difficulties of 188U which shall be discussed later on. 

It is one of the main characteristics of the modern sys- 
of production that it leaves the race for the profits to 
gained by the employers open to all who have the means 
to become such, thus establishing the freedom of competition, 
but also tie- war between the competitors; a war which, 
although carried on in peaceable pursuits, is waged with 
ferocious cruelty and destroys, regardless of the dictates of 
humanity and civilization, the lives, health, and happiness 
of more defenceless men, women, and children than the 
mosl bloody war. 



52 A New Gospel of Labor. 

But the worst feature of this savage war of competition 
is, that in the United States it is steadily assuming more 
dangerous proportions than anywhere else, because here the 
science of statistics, [which is to a people what book-keep- 
ing is to a business man] is yet in its infancy. That is why 
numbers of persons are, continually, opening up new indus- 
trial establishments without having any knowledge about 
the needs of the people regarding the newly manufactured 
goods, and whether the national market is glutted with, or 
demanding the same. The majority of these new begin- 
ners depend upon the old word that " Competition is the 
life of trade," and upon the common trade-maxim that, 
" where anybody else can sell, they too can dispose of their 
goods," and trusting in the truth of these absurd sayings, 
they commence to manufacture. 

On one subject, however, all these new business-men are 
well informed, namely: that they must manufacture cheap- 
ly and quickly. Cheaply, to underbid all competitors and 
still have a good profit left ; and quickly, to dispose of their 
products and gain as much of the coveted profits as possi- 
ble before the times become dull. 

But cheapness and quickness of production can only be 
obtained by the use of steam-power and machinery, which 
answer the purpose so much the better, the greater the scale 
on which they are employed ; wherefore it requires large 
capital concentrated in the hands of corporations or of a 
few individuals to produce in the most profitable manner, 
that is, in the matter promising the quickest accumulation 
of wealth. 

Machinery brings with it the employment of the cheap- 
est kind of unskilled labor and enables its owners to fill 
their factories, farms, and mines, with the dregs of the low- 
est working elements of foreign countries, with the half 



A New Gospel of Labor. 53 

barbaric Huns, Tartars. Mongols, and others, to replace the 
skilled resident workmen who demand higher wages. But 
with the progressing improvement of machinery females 
and children have become the favorite workers, not only on 
account of their cheapness, but because of their disposition. 
They do not save their strength like experienced men who 
know that constant quick labor will be too great a strain 
upon their bodies; they do not oppose the slave-driving ten- 
dencies of the foremen and bosses, but submit to the severest 
factory discipline ; they work with all their energy when 
driven at their labor, and unconsciously wear out their 
fragile bodies for miserable pittances of wages, in order to 
win the approbation of their taskmasters. What matters it 
to the latter, if overwork plants the germ of consumption 
in the breast of the young mother or of the girl budding 
into womanhood, and rushes tender children into prema- 
ture age, decline, and early graves. 

The law does not punish this kind of murder of the in- 
nocent^ : nor has the factory owner even to help bur)' them ; 
for, as soon as the workers fail in strength and become 
sickly, they are discharged and their places filled with new 
healthy victims. The market is at all times full of work- 
ing women and children who are ready to become candi- 
date- for disease and death in shop and factory, in order to 
earn a living 

While machine-work thus decimates the child and female 
workers, it causes want of employment among the male 
adult.-, and a -harp competition sets in between them to ob- 
tain work. And as competition in any article reduces its 
price, so competition between workmen reduces their price, 
that is their wages, which steadily fall with the increase of 
machine work. 

When, in connection with these characteristic workings 



54 A New Gospel of Labor. 

of the present S} 7 stein of production, it is remembered that 
in the year 1880 the number of laborers employed in the 
industrial and mechanical business amounted only to 
2,019,035 male youths and adults, besides 713,560 women, 
girls, and children, while the machine- work and motive- 
power used in the same branches represented the labor of 
42,000,000 of men, and when it is added that in the trans- 
portation business 28,000 locomotives, together with 250,- 
000 workmen actually employed, performed the labor of 
13,500,000 laborers and 54,000,000 horses ; then the follow- 
ing conclusions offer themselves in reference to the large 
productive and the small consumptive power of the people 
in the year 1880: 

1. The reckless production invited by the present indus- 
trial system had caused a large amount of over-production, 

2. The accumulation oi the national wealth in the 
hands of a small number of people had lessened the con- 
sumptive power of the moneyed class through the paucity of 
its members. 

3. The inconsiderate increase of steam-power and ma- 
chine-work with its accompanying child, female, and cheap 
imported labor, had reduced the number of employed male 
adults and lessened their wages, thereby reducing the con- 
sumptive power of the great masses of the people. 

4. The reduced condition of the working classes, the ex- 
orbitant charges of the transportation companies, and the 
competition made by the larae class farmers had decreased 
the income of the middle and small class farmer, and there- 
with lessened their consumptive power. 



THE! ANAROHV Or PRODUCTION. 

These were the causes which had, at the end of the cen- 
sus year 1879-'80, filled the ware-houses, stores, and factories 



A V Gospel of Labor. 55 

all over the United States, besides their regular stock, with 
10,000,000 worth of goods which were left unconsumed 
during the year. 

Had this happened to a private business-man, he would 
have become aware of it by his hooks at the end of the 
year, if not sooner, and taken immediate steps to, gradual- 
ly, decrease his production in the future so as not to suffer 
for want of work, and at the same time to establish a reason- 
able proportion between his production and the consump- 
tion of his goods by his customers. To do otherwise would 
have been stigmatized as utter want of business ability, and 
his speedy bankruptcy predicted, and with good reason. 

But with a nation such a reasonable, business-like course 
could not be pursued. While a business-man has his book- 
keeping done so much more exact and perfect the larger 
his business is, it is one of the worst characteristics of the 

- nt industrial system that the economical business of a 
nation, however many millions her population may contain, 
i> done without any business methods at all, without public 
or private control, in such a reckless, disorderly, and hap- 
hazard manner that the people know nothing about their 
relative -landing a- producers and consumers, nor about 
their actual economical condition, until they feel the effects 
ndition. and thence learn whether the times are 
prosperous or bad. 

This want of intelligence ami order in the national eco- 
nomical affairs, which can only, correctly, be designated as 
the anarchy of modern production, prevails to a certain de- 
in every civilized nation; but in the United States 
more than elsewhere. Bere the continued prosperity of the 
people iiad caused them to remain in ignorance about the 
most sinipL mica] principles, and made the national 

and state governments neglect the gathering of sufficient 



56* A New Gospel oj Labor. 

statistics to have taught them whither the nation was drift- 
ing. Here the pride of the people of, and their confidence 
in, the wealth and large extent of the country had let them 
look down with contempt upon the poorer nations of the 
old world, instead of learning from their industrial devel- 
opment, and profiting from their errors. And here the 
greed for the great riches that seemed, until of late years, 
to be within the reach of everybody, was so omnipotent as 
to make the people object to any legal restrictions against 
the too rapid accumulation of wealth as being infringements 
upon the personal rights of the citizens. Hence the an- 
archy of production bloomed here in all its poisonous 
splendor, and, assisted as it was by popular and legislative 
ignorance, worked its mischief to the highest possible 
degree. 

It is, therefore, not surprising that at the end of the year 
1880 nobody cared to stop work in order to investigate 
whether the apparent prosperity was genuine or deceptive. 
Everybody was busy and wanted to remain so; and thus 
the production went on through the year 1881 at the same 
speed and extent as before, until, near the end of the second 
year, first here and there a cry of warning arose from mer- 
chants and store-keepers, and soon from eveiy where thou- 
sands of voices joined in the chorus that the supply was 
too large and the demand not nearly equal to it. 

By that time the warehouses, stores, and factories of the 
country had become over-filled with a surplus of the uncon- 
sumed products of two previous years amounting to no less 
than $12,000,000,000 worth, or nearly one entire year's pro- 
ducts, while the demand was decreasing. 

Then the nation was confronted with this extrordinary 
problem to solve : Owing to the low consumptive power of 
the people and to too much production, the causes of which 



A N\ I hnpel 0/ Labor. 57 

have, heretofore, been explained, the working classes had 
produced as much in two years, as the people could only 
consume in three. There had. consequently, one year's 

work been done in advance which had to be made up by as 
much idleness in the future. But how could this be ar- 
ranged, when the people had to work in order to live, and 
when in each further year their usual work would create 
another half year's advance work, and thus keep adding to 
the previous over-production? 

Theoretically considered the problem could be solved in 
three different ways : 

1. By raising the wages, and therein" increasing the con- 
suming power of the workmen; and at the same time re- 
ducing the amount of machine-work and shortening the 
daily working hours to such a degree as to establish an equi- 
librium between the productive and consumptive power of 
tli.- nation. 

A- this plan would have decreased the employers' profits 

to a minimum, it is under the present system of production 

whose main purpose it is to give the employers the largest 

sible profits, impossible to be carried out. and would, at 

once, have been denounced as chimerical and impracticable. 

2. The next solution would have been to destroy the 
surplus product of the previous two years in order to create 
a demand for more production and keep the workers en- 
gaged. 

Such a proceeding would have robbed many thousands 
of people of their property, and therefore been not only 
an act of injustice hut a serious crime against the law. 

3. The last way open was to stop all work of production 
that was not strictly necessary, until the labor spent in the 
two years' overproduction had been made up by an equaJ 
period of idleness, and the surplus product been consumed. 

This method would have deprived millions of people of 



58 A New Gospel of Labor. 

the poorest classes for years of their income in whole or in 
pari, and plunged them into infinite misery and downright 
starvation ; it would have been a cruel, barbaric act of in- 
humanity to many millions of inoffensive men, women, and 
children, But it would not have been a crime against the 
the law ! And that made this method practicable ! And 
so it was adopted ; and, during the six years of the hard 
times following the two prosperous years, it was carried into 
effect to straighten out the difference between the under- 
consumption and over-production, at the cost of the work- 
ing classes. 

Or to state the matter in a few words: Because the work- 
ing classes had not been able to consume more than the entire 
wages which their employers paid them, a large number of them-, 
reaching into the millions, was condemned to be for years with- 
out employment and, consequently, together with their families 
without an income. 

This does not mean that the people at large decided up- 
on these propositions and chose the last one ; for the people 
did not know the full severity of their condition, and never 
learnt to know it until later on when they felt its evil effects. 
Nor would the people have had the power to act, because 
the production is not controlled by them but by the em- 
ployers, the owners of all the means of production, the 
mines, the industrial establishments, and the capital. 

Nor did the employers act in unison in this matter, as it 
is hardly to be supposed that any of them either fully knew 
the extent oi the impending trouble. But whenever they 
did take action, individually, or in their employers' associa- 
tions and combinations, to get rid of the surplus product 
which they themselves had caused to be created, they never 
increased the consumptive power of their workmen by pay- 
ing them larger wages ; they never introduced a shorter 



A Xcu "' Labt>Y. 59 

work-day at the same wages paid previously for the longer 
day; they never did anything which might have Lowered 
their own profits, [excepting when driven by competition to 

3 i : but, invariably, they adopted, as the " only practical 
and natural" means of redress, the third method stated of 
barging their workmen without regard to the conse- 
quences (){ such action upon the men and the families thus 
•deprived of their income. 

For, in so doing they did not violate the law of the land, 
and with the higher law of justice and humanity the capi- 
talistic business-man of modern times has nothing to do. 
The modern system of production ignores the ethics of 
morality and has put in their place the iron laws of com- 
petition and of greedy self-interest to guide the capitalistic 
business-man and employer. 



the: hardtimeis. 

y of the manner in which the American people 

through the long crisis following the prosperous years 

'81 is, therefore, a tale of uninterrupted woe and 

misery, of care and trouble, of starvation and despair, 

which if written by the hand of genius might fire the 

hearts of the citizens to speedy reformatory action. In the 

of such ability, at least a short outline of the main 

incidents of that era shall be given, as the subject is too 

important, teaches lessons of too much value, to be passed 

over slightly. 

The reckless production of '80 and 'si was not checked. 
even when the cries ol warning had announced the ap- 
proaching crisis; contrarily, it seemed to have been spurred 
on by the alarm. As the markel was getting overfilled ev- 
ery day. and a total stagnation seemed not far off, cyvvy 



#0 A New Gospel of Labor. 

praducer tried to get rid of his goods as quickly as possible,, 
and competition waged its war for the survival of the 
fittest — in this ease the wealthiest— with double vigor. 

The ponderous steam-engines and machinery toiled day 
and night to work up the raw material on hand and get 
the product upon the market without loss of time ; and at 
the same time the wages were reduced to underbid the com- 
peting firms. The workmen who, during the prosperous 
times, had accumulated money enough to live a few weeks 
without working met the reductions of wages with strikes 
and boycotts. The wealthy employers could withstand this 
strain, while the less wealthy ones succumbed, their busi- 
ness places were closed, and their workers thrown out of 
employment. 

The number of the unemployed were thus increased, and 
the competition between them for a chance to get work and 
earn a living sharpened. This gave the employers another 
opportunity to lower the w r ages. The labor-organizations 
resisted, all through the hard times, with great sacrifices 
the reduction of the workers' pay, and in several branches 
of business they succeeded in keeping it up. But the aver- 
age income of the workers was nevertheless reduced, be- 
cause no labor-organization, however powerful, could pre- 
vent the steady decrease of work. 

For with the increase of the unemployed who, earning 
nothing, could consume but little, the national consumption 
decreased every day, and the production was limited to the 
actual demands ; the employers having, by this time, be- 
come as cautious lest they lose through over work, as they 
had, previously, been eager to gain by it. The working 
time of the employed workers w T as, consequently, reduced, 
often to one-half, the wages diminished accordingly, and 
the consumptive power of these vast numbers of wage- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 61 

workers and their families decreased in the same degree. 

Thus, while the enforced idleness oi the formerly employ- 
ed people helped to restore the needed economical equilib- 
rium, the lessened ability of the employed and unemployed 
to consume impeded it: and it is evident that the straight- 
ening out process had to be extended over a long series of 
wars, when it is remembered that the surplus product for 
the first two years alone amounted to $12,000,000,000, a 
sum which represented the advance labor of 16,217,000 
workmen for nearly a whole year. This labor could only 
be offset by the enforced idleness of an equal number of 
worker- for an equal period of time, or by a smaller num- 
ber for a proportionately larger period of years; as for in- 
stan e, by 2.000,000 of persons for 6 years, which was prob- 
ably the actual ratio. 

But, besides this enormous number, it was necessary that, 
in onbr to prevent a new yearly over-production, another 
half million should every year become idle to make room 
for the constantly incoming immigration, whose cheap la- 
bor element steadily supplanted the resident workmen, and 
helped to swell the number of the unemployed to alarming 
proportions. 

The truth of the old, but in modern times disregarded 
- lying that the working classes are the bone and sinew of a 
nation, and cannot suffer without affecting the other classes 
likewise, proved itself, at this time, very forcibly to the mid- 
dle class of the population. The small merchants and 
traders found their business waning with the decreasing in- 
come of the working people. A deadly competition was 
the consequence, in which those having the largest capital, 
who, being able to buy cheapest, could -ell cheapest, drove 
tie- men with smaller means into bankruptcy by thousands 
every year, as the following figures turnished by Brad- 



02 A New Gospel oi Labor. 

street's, the best authority on trade and public economy in 
the United States, plainly show : 



Table of Bankruptcies from 1880 to '88. 



Year Number of Bankruptcies. 



1880 4,735 

1881 i 5,929. 
18^2 7.635. 

1883 10,299 

1884 11,620. 

1885 1,116. 



Amount of Liabilities. 



.$ 65,752.000 

. 76,094,000 

. V3.23K.000 

. 175,9o8,000 

. 248,740,000 

. 119,120,000 

. 113.648,000 



1886 10,568 

1&J7 9,740 130,05,000 

1888 1 10,587... | 1 2 0,242,400 

This table exhibits the rapidity with which the number 
of ruined business-men rose from 1880 to '83 whence it be- 
came nearly steady at more than double the rate of the 
years '80 and '81. Large capital kept on killing off its 
poorer competitors all the time. But the loss of the latter 
was the gain of the people. The hundreds of millions of 
dollars worth of goods sold at the bankrupt sales lar below 
the usual price, and the low prices set up by the traders and 
business-men in their competitive war with each other, re- 
duced the value of the over-product on hand, and helped 
also to reduce its volume, thus assisting materially in short- 
ening the time of the crisis. 

On the other hand the number of people who were con- 
demned to idleness constantly increased. The members of 
the middle-class who had invested their small capital in lots 
and buildings ior the purpose of renting them out, found 
their income daily decreasing because the renters, [mostly 
members of the working classes], could not pay the previous 
high rates of rent or any rent at all. The consequence w T as 
that the building trade became confined to the most neces- 
sary repairing and similar small work, throwing large num- 
bers of men engaged in the building business out of em- 
ployment. At the same time the transportation companies 



.1 A/i w Gospel oj Labor. <>•'* 

began to be unable to withstand the strain of the crisis up- 
on their business, and made reductions in their running ex- 
penses everywhere. Steamboats and other craft were tied 
up, trains and cars run at larger intervals of time, and em- 
ployes, especially oi the low-paid classes, discharged by the 
many thousands all over the country. 

The stagnation of business now became a panic. En- 
forced idleness seemed to be the rule, and steady work the 
exception. Business-men sold cheaper than ever, and ''sell- 
ing out" was the order of the day, with some in order to 
meet their obligations, with others to get out of business be- 
fore the last dollar was lost. Closest economy prevailed in 
every household of the working and poorer middle-class 
people who yet had any income, in order to save something- 
tor their coming day of idleness or want; while those who 
had no income but lived on borrowed money or by selling- 
whatever they were possessed oi, had to stint themselves like 
misers lot they arrive at the end of their credit, and then 
face starvation. 

In these days the once comfortable homes of many Amer- 
ican families looked as desolate as if a hostile army had 
pillaged them. Everything, even the household goods, had 
D -old or pawned to protect the family against hunger 
and cold. Unceasing care and misery had become the con- 
stant guests in millions of homes by day and night, while 
in the highways and byeways of city and country starva- 
tion -talked broadly about, and drove its countless victims 
into the arms of vice and crime, or into lives of shame. 

Quite in contrast with this deplorable condition into 
which the crisis had placed the overwhelming majority of 
tie- 47 million- of wage-workers, tanners, and their family- 
members, was the effect of the hard times upon the mem- 
bers of the moneyed class and its hangers on. Most of 



64 A New Gospel of Labor. 

them, excepting a number of the professional men, had 
steady incomes with which they could, through the re- 
duced price of all the necessaries of life, buy cheaper, live 
better, and accumulate more savings than in prosperous 
times ; and it was a surprise to these well-to-do public offic- 
ials, high salaried corporation-men, retired merchants, and 
capitalists, why there were so many people, especially work- 
ingmen, constantly complaining about hard times when ev- 
erything was so cheap and easily to be got ! And the same 
class of people are wondering about it yet, every day, and 
are among the most relentless opponents of the working 
classes in the latters' endeavor to better their condition. 

But the profits which these people drew irom the hard 
times were insignificant in comparison to those reaped by 
the active capitalist. The money-loaner wallowed, in these 
days, with body and soul in the mire of usury. He obliged 
the indebted house-owner and business-man with a mort- 
gage-loan at an interest-rate of 12 to 30 per cent, per an- 
num, and the unemployed workingman or working woman 
with a pawn broker's loan at the rate of 10 per cent, per 
month or 120 per cent, per year. 

And, yet, still better fared the "respectable' 1 capitalist who 
did no usurer's business but bought everywhere where peo- 
ple were forced to sell, for a minimum price, houses and 
lots, farms, timber land and mines, railroads and ships, in 
fact everything of that kind that w r as cheap to be got and 
sure to be valuable in the near future in better times. Thus 
more capital was accumulated and concentrated, more of 
the country's natural resources gathered in by the small but 
industrious class of money-owners. 

Such a condition of a whole nation, lasting as it did for 
years, from 1882 to '88, after having been preceded shortly 
before by a similar crisis [from 1873 to 78] could not fail 



A New Gospel of Labor. 65 

and demoralizing effect upon the 
character of the people. Selfishness, the lowest vice of 
man, was stimulated to the utmost, and with its spread hon- 
esty, confidence, and the nobler virtues of the human race 
forced into the back-ground. This is best characterized by 
thf popular saying generally adopted since the days of the 
hard times, that "one cannot trust anybody, now-a-days, 
any more." 

The open split between the wage-working, and the mon- 
eyed classes of the United States, which was first affected 
during the erisis of 1873-78, became after 1881 a rent of 
such magnitude that it could not be remedied, and led to 
such aggressions on the part of the radical elements of both 
classes — anarchistic agitation and murder on one side, and 
the murderous use of the rifle and shotgun in the hands of 
hired Pinkerton thugs on the other — as was more worthy 
of savages than ol civilized men. 

But nowhere did the degrading influence of the years of 
poverty and want show itself worse than in the political 
life of the nation. Office-seeking, formerly the occupation 
of the professional politicians, became, through the need of 
the times, now looked upon as a generally desirable means 
of making a living, and was therefore quickly adopted by 
thousands of formerly respectable men of the middle and 
workingmen's classes. This swelling of the ranks of the 
aspirants for office made the scramble for the latter more 
tierce and repulsive, and turned the elections, especially the 
local ones, into disgraceful fights for the places at the pub- 
lic crib, in which fights those using the lowest cunning, the 
blackest falsehood and hypocrisy, are the most successful; 
while tie- voice of the patriot is drowned by the harangue 
of the selfish demagogue, or by the howl of the hired ward- 
heeler. 



$6 A New Gospel of Labor. 

So deep, indeed, have the hard times following the pros- 
perous year 1881 put their imprint upon even the national 
politics that, ever since the darkest time of that crisis in. 
1886, the national elections have not been fought out, as in 
former years, for or against some great principle, some 
grand idea of human rights, but they have simply become 
a struggle of the people for some legislation which might 
secure them a chance to get work and earn a livings with- 
out this desire having so far been satisfied by either of the 
parties in power. 

This was the condition, of the people in 1886, when the 
hard times had reached a stage where nothing but artificial 
means could make the unemployed withstand the aggres- 
sions of want and misery any more; when r according to 
conservative official investigations, from 4 to 6 millions of 
people out of 50 millions, or about one out of every ten 
of the population were without an income, and when Con- 
gress, in vain, endeavored to ascertain the origin of the 
trouble and, consequently, failed to find any remedy. 

By this time many of the less well situated adherents of 
the moneyed class, the newspaper owners, doctors, preachers,, 
lawyers, the less wealthy business-men, and merchants felt 
their incomes waning under the steadily increasing poverty 
of the masses of the people upon whom they depended for 
a great part of their earnings. Newspaper subscriptions 
and advertising fell off to an extent endangering the exist- 
ence of many papers, lawyers had no business worth speak- 
ing of, doctors could not collect their bills, and the wealthy 
merchant, and factory -owners even feared, at the prevailing 
low prices, to be crushed out by their wealthier competitors. 

When these people began to get embarrassed and, com- 
pelled to go into debt, had to become victims of the lestive 
money-loaner who, knowing in his business no difference 



.1 N( w Gospel q] Labor. 1)7 

Hiwvni the classes, applied the thumb-screws of usury to 
them as he had done before to the small business-man, the 
small farmer, and the wage-worker, thou a wail of distress 
went up from one end of the country to another, and all 
sorts of artificial means were made use of to assist in end- 
ing the crisis. 

Charity was invoked by the preacher in the church; the 
press dilated in long editorials on the duty of capital to la- 
bor ; the usurers were scored by public orators ; tire politi- 
cal parties passed resolutions of sympathy with the suffer- 
ing worker- and adopted platforms containing glowing 
promises for the future : private charity was put into lull 
operation : and cities and counties spent millions of dollars 
to provide work for the unemployed, to relieve the resident 
poor, and to send vagrants away to other places. 

In this manner the consumptive power of the people was 
raised artificially; and between the increased consumption, 
the limitation of the production during the hard times, and 
the low price of all goods caused by the sharp competition, 
the national market became finally cleared of its surperflu- 
products on hand, and ready for a renewal of the full 
production of previous prosperous times. The problem of 
straightening out the over-production and under-consump- 
tion of the years 1879 to '81 had been solved through a 
starvation struggle of 5 or 6 years. 

During all this time the more or less unemployed work- 
ers had kept up their consumptive power as best they could, 
earning a few dollar,- occasionally, selling all they had, 
borrowing wherever they could, and accepting work or re- 
lief at public expense; all of which the workmen had to 
make good in the coming prosperous times. 

Tic- small business-men who had escaped bankruptcy by 
u r '»ing into debt, and the -mail house-owners who, to weather 



08 A New Gospel of Labor. 

the storm of the hard times, had incumbered their property 
with mortgages, they all expected to make good their losses 
and pay off their debts in the coming good times. 

The only persons who had managed well during the 
hardest of times, and not incurred debts but accumulated 
more wealth, were the owners of large amounts of capital. 
To them the good times could hardly bring any greater 
profits than they had received during the years of the peo- 
ple's suffering, through the misfortune of their iellow- 
men. 



SHORT RECOVERY AND QUICK RELAPSE. 

The good times were approaching. Slowly, one after an- 
other, the great industrial establishments were overhauled, 
supplied with new improved machinery aud increased motive 
power, and resumed business. Their owners were called by 
the press public benefactors ; and great was the praise be- 
stowed upon them from the members of their own class for 
the patriotic regards which these industrial kings and 
barons were thus showing for the wants of the people. 

Gradually the work of production was resumed all over 
the country. All those who belonged to the poorer middle 
and the working classes, who earned anything by wages or 
otherwise, bought to the full amount of their ability to re- 
place what they had sold or used up, during the long years 
of the hard times, in furniture, tools, clothing, bedding, and 
similar articles. The good times created a demand for 
more lodgings, ware-houses, and business places, which was 
readily answered by a brisk renewal of work in the build- 
ing business. Transportation was increased in the same ra- 
tio as other business did. Farm products obtained a better 



A New Gospel of Labor. 69 

price and were more in demand, giving the fanners better 
income- and a greater consumptive power. 

Trade, too. became stimulated, so that the work of pro- 
duction and transportation, and the mercantile business 
again turned, in a very few months, the country into an 
enormous work-shop where men, women, and children, to- 
gether with immense steam-power, toiled day and night to 
produce what the nation needed alter the long spell of pov- 
erty and half-suppressed consumption. 

But the full prosperity of 1880 and ? 81 did not renew 
- If. There were so many people in debt from the effect 
of the hard times and had to use so much of their income 
to pay these debts, that their full earnings could not nearly 
giveu up to the consumption of the national produce. 
Taxes, too. were higher than before : for the cost of the sup- 
port of the paupers and indigent during the hard times, 
and the expenses of the municipalities in giving the unem- 
ployed work, all had to be paid. And it could, consequent- 
ly, not be long before the same reckless over-production of 
1880 and 'si was re-enacted. 

Alter a short year or two of moderate prosperity the hard 
times again set in. only more severe than before, because the 
people had not thoroughly recovered yet from the effects of 
tli<' depression which had ended in '88 ; and so the business- 
failures commenced to rise again in 1890, until in 1893, 
while the wealthy people celebrated the Columbian anni- 
versary with big shows and festivities, the national bank- 
ruptcies swelled up to 15,560 with liabilities amounting to 
no less than 8402,427,8 IS. And the winter of 1893-'94 
found the workingmen of the country again out of work by 
the millions and thronging the streets and places before the 
City Halls and Court II u r f j r to obtain public work 

or relief; while the farmers were unable to sell their goods 



70 A New Gospel of Labor. 

and, with then* barns and granaries stocked with the choic- 
est products of the land, suffered from want and poverty. 

How could it be otherwise ! The concentration of capi- 
tal in the hands of still fewer people had continued through- 
out the hard times between 1880 and 1890, steam power 
and machinery had again increased at an enormous rate 
accompanied by the displacement of male adult workers by 
women, girls, and children ; and the difference between the 
productive and the consumptive power of the people was 
greater than ever. 

What will this state of the economical affairs of the 
United States lead to? is the question asked to-day by mil- 
lions of anxious hearts. It is not difficult to find the an- 
swer. If the nation continue in its present business- 
methods of reducing, through the low income paid to the 
working classes, the consumptive power of the people, while 
the productive power is as steadily increased through the 
long working hours, the reckless use of machinery, and the 
anarchy of production, whereby the number of employed 
workingmen is constantly decreased, although the popula- 
tion is, through births and immigration, rapidly growing ; 
— then it is clear that under such a senseless, suicidal eco- 
nomical policy the good old times of prosperity can never 
return ; but that the present industrial depression, with its 
millions of unemployed men and unsupported families and 
all the accompanying poverty and pauperism, must become 
the permanent condition of the people, and be getting worse 
every year. 

In a few years the great middle class of the people will 
have ceased to exist, and the whole population be divided 
in two classes only ; a small but all-powerful one composed 
of millionaires, bankers, wealthy business-men, and high 
salaried public and private officials, who will form a mon- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 71 

eyed aristocracy and rule the country's industries, finances, 
and politics. And on the other side there will be an over- 
whelming majority o\' the people, consisting of bankrupted 
business-men, indebted house-owners, mortgaged small and 
middle class farmers, and employed and unemployed work- 
men, and their family members; the condition of all of 
whom will be. at the best, one of constant uncertainty and 
a hard struggle lor a living, while many millions of them 
will be lowered to the economical plane of the poorest 
European proletarians, of the starving Russian peasants, 
and of the famine-stricken Pariahs of the East Indies and 
China. 

It is evident that such a condition of the great masses of 
the people in tJtis country will not only be a disgrace to civ- 
ilization, but a threatening danger to all government: and 
it is no less evident that this danger will be rapidly ap- 
proaching, unless humanity and reason step in soon, and 
provide such remedial measures as will not merely give 
temporary relief, but form a radical remedy against the 
evils which are, since years, driving the people irom their 
former affluence and prosperity into want and starvation. 

What these evils are, has. heretofore, been explained ; 
they can be summed up in the few words : Scarcity of 
work and insufficient incomes ! It has, also, been shown 
that the prevailing industrial system produces them. But 
the remedy against them cannot be pointed out, unless it be 
first known why such a pernicious system is being upheld ; 
for what reasons these small wages are being paid, whether 
through selfishness or by necessity; and why. how, and in 
whose favor the nation's wealth is being taken from the 
people. 

With this information gained, the veil will be lifted from 
the secret of the distribution of the national wealth between 



72 A New Gospel of Labor. 

the working and the moneyed classes, and the prime cause 
of the labor and industrial troubles laid bare to the roots, so 
that the needed remedial legislation can be determined upon. 

The United States statistics again, incomplete as they 
are, lurnish that most important information in an admira- 
bly clear manner. For, although the census reports are, as 
has previously been stated, remarkably deficient regarding 
the financial status ot the members of the moneyed class 
generally, they give such special data about one branch of 
them, the owners of the mechanical and manufacturing es- 
tablishments, that their incomes can be ascertained with 
considerable accuracy. And as these shop and factory own- 
ners are the principal employers of labor ; are the men who 
pay the small wages to the workingmen ; employ the im- 
mense steam-power and machinery and the cheap female 
and children's labor ; and who take the first and therefore, 
presumably, the largest profits out of the country's produc- 
tion, the} r are the very element of the population whose in- 
come, and whose dealings with the working classes contain 
the key to the whole question at issue, and must be exam- 
ined into. 

This investigation together with the surprising and all- 
important results which it proffers, and which are, in their 
full details and applications, herewith for the first time laid 
before the American people, form the subject of the follow- 
ing chapter. 



CHAPTER VI. 



The Income of the Employees. — How by Means of Small 
Wages Paid Millionaire- Fortunes are Created. — 
How. and Why Capital is Concentrated —How and 
Why Trusts and Monopolies are Formed. — The Veil 
Lifted From the Prime Cause of the Labor-Problem 
and of the increasing impoverishment of the people. 

The employers' profits form an old theme of discussion, 
some people considering them extremely high and unjust to 
the workingmen, while the employers and their defenders 
claim that they are only the legitimate, just, and often even 
insufficient returns on the invested capital. The evidence 
given by the statistics of the census reports decide this dis- 
pute over the profits of the industrial employers by show- 
ing what their earnings are, and where they come from. 



the: em ployers' income:. 

Pages 932 to 942, and 1098 to 1253, of Vol. II of the 
(Jen. Comp. of 1880 contain a series of tables stating the 
number of shops and factories existing in that year in the 
whole country, together with the value of their production, 
the amount of wages paid, the value of the raw material 



74 A New Gospel of Labor. 

used, and the number of workers employed in each branch 
of industry. 

As a reprint of the whole of these statistics would go far 
beyond the limits of this book, there are offered here for 
the consideration of the reader all the industries of which 
the census department has furnished detailed information, 
and of the general list the most important ones. Of these 
industries which form the bulk of the American manufac- 
turing business the incomes of the employers have been 
calculated, and are shown in full with all the obtainable de- 
tails in the, hereafter, appended table. 

The contents of this table furnish some startling dis- 
closures, and upset so many pretenses made by the owners 
of the industrial establishments that they will, no doubt, 
meet with a great deal of credulity, and perhaps even fierce 
opposition. It is therefore necessary to explain, how they 
have been prepared, in order to prove their reliability. 

The number of establishments, the amount of capital in- 
vested, the number, age, and sex of the workers employed, 
the cost of the raw materials used, and the amount of 
wages paid have been copied from the before mentioned 
pages of the census reports. The wear and tear percentage 
has been prepared by the author, because the statistics con- 
tain no data about it. In calculating this percentage a 
most liberal allowance has been made by assuming that 
half the invested capital was in the shape of buildings and 
machinery, and 7 per cent, of this amount has been set 
aside to pay for the yearly repairing, renovating, and re- 
placing of buildings, tools and machinery. 

This wear and tear percentage is, no doubt, too large ; 
for not only does the invested capital given in the statistics 
contain a lot of watered stock, all of which has in the calcu- 
lations made here been considered, in the employers' favor, 
as cash, but in no instance where there is any official infor- 



A New Gospel oj Labor. 75 

illation as to the cost oi machinery and buildings does the 
same amount to one-hali oi the total capital invested, as 
ran been scon from the following extracts: 

In the chemical product industry the cost of buildings 
and machinery was $34,675,714, while the entire invested 
capital is given as $85,374,211, 

In the petroleum refining business the cost of all the 
buildings and machinery was $5,637,286, while the entire 
invested capital is given as $27,325,746. 

And in the coal mining industry the value of machinery 
including- engines was $22,915,274, while the entire invest- 
ed capital is given as $364,908,324. 

As the percentage of destructible property furnished by 
these industries is the highest given in the statistics, it 
shows that the wear and tear percentage adopted for this 
table is too high, and tends to make the employers' income 
to appear lower than it was in fact. 

In the wage-column are included all the wages and sala- 
ries paid, including the high incomes of the superintendents, 
book-keepers, managers, clerks, and foremen. 

To obtain the owner's income there has been deducted 
from the value of the total product the whole amount of 
wages and salaries paid, the cost of the raw material, and 
the wear and tear percentage. This balance is the total in- 
come. The same is shown in two sums, the smaller of 
which is a 7 per cent, interest on the total invested capital, 
and the larger the employer's clear profit. For, as the mil- 
lions of the small and middle class farmers had to include 
the interest on their invested capital in their incomes in 
order to be able to make a living, the income of the shop 
and factory-owners should be measured in the same man- 
ner. However, to give the reader a chance to study every 
view of this income question, the clear profit and the in- 
st on the invested capital have been given in the table 
irately as well as added together. For the same purpose 
90 the last column has been prepared which shows, in 
how many year.- the entire invested capital has been paid 
back to the employer out of his clear profits, supposing that 



76 A New Gospel of Labor. 

during that period of time he managed to live, as befits an 
economical capitalist who desires to become a millionaire, 
on the 7 per cent, interest of his total invested capital [cash 
and watered stock together]. 

As in these pages the reader's attention will repeatedly 
be called to the unknown quantity of watered [that is un- 
paid] stock, which is in the statistics also considered as cash 
actually paid in, it may be proper to cite an instance of one 
of the several watered stock transactions of one of the most 
prominent corporations of the United States. In a suit 
of the Union Pacific R. R. Co. against its striking employes, 
United States Judge Caldwell at Omaha, Neb., said in his 
decision: "It is a part of the history of the country of 
which the court will take judicial notice, that for the first 
136,000,000 of stock issued by the Union Pacific R. R. Co., 
this company received less than 2 cents on a dollar [or less 
than $720,000 ever actually paid in for $36,000,000 worth 
of stock] and the profit of construction represented by out- 
standing bonds was $43,929,328." 

In this case the stock had been watered at the rate of 
5000 per cent, on the capital really paid in, not to mention 
the enormous construction profits made likewise by the 
holders of this original stock. And if this was done by a 
public company, which was under government control, and 
whose members and officers belonged to the most promi- 
nent men and the "best people" -ol the country, what may 
be the amount ol the watered stock swindle perpetrated in 
private corporations that are managed by greedy, unscrupu- 
lous speculators? Let the reader remember that question 
while perusing this chapter; it will convince him that the 
total employers' profit-amounts hereinafter given, are, prob- 
ably, only a small percentage of the real profit rate obtain- 
ed through the use of the watered stock swindle which is 
employed in most every private corporation. 

With these explanations the table is easily to be under- 
stood, which is a matter of the greatest importance, because 
it shows in indisputable facts and figures the main cause of 
the labor-trouble in the United States. 






Fh 
X 






Ph 



X 

OP 

O 

= 

X 

- 
o 



i 



N 



Av 



No. 



Income-Table of Employers and Workers in Prominent" Industries 




^4 New Gospel of Labor. 77 

If these statistics, which show that in the most prominent 
branches of the industrial and manufacturing work the 
highest paid average wages did not reach two dollars a day, 
while the employers' incomes were incomparably higher 
going into the hundreds of dollars and even, in one branch 
of business, approaching a thousand dollars a day, — if these 
remarkable figures could be read by a person without know- 
ing to what age and people they belong, one might easily 
presume that they appertain to some barbaric age of thou- 
sands of years ago, not unlikely 1880 before Christ, when, 
perhaps, some royal tyrant and a poweriul aristocracy ruled 
a numerous nation, whose working classes were slaves and 
had to support their king and lords in the greatest wealth 
and luxury, while living themselves in squalid poverty and 
want. 

But, in reality, these disgracefully low, and the more dis- 
gracefully high incomes were received in the year 1880 
after Christ by the wage-workers, and by the employers, of 
the Republic of the United States, one of the greatest, 
Lthiest, and most favored countries, which is particular- 
ly famous for the pride its citizens take in their high civili- 
zation and intelligence, and in their sacred political princi- 
ple of the equality of all men. And these same citizens 
<lid then, in 1880, and do now, with all their means of legis- 
lation and custom, further the glaring economical inequali- 
exhihited in the foregoing table; and their representa- 
tives in the press, in the legislative halls, in high offices, and 
d in the churches, hail the immense employers' profits 
which help to impoverish and enslave the masses of the 
l oi natural prosperity and wealth! 

is so much unmeasureable privation, un- 
happiness, and misery expressed in the low figures of the 
working people- _ and so much waste, luxury, and Jul- 



78' A New Gospel of Labor. 

filment of all earthly desires represented by the riches 
which the employers and their families draw out of the 
products of the others' labor,, that the injustice prevailing 
in the distribution of the great national wealth which is 
produced in the industries of the United States is clearly 
evident, and puts the imprint of inhumanity and usurious 
extortion upon the action of the great industrial kings and 
barons of modern times, who force this distribution upon 
the people. 

It seems to be surprising that the people have not, before 
this, become acquainted with the proof of the injustice 
done them, since the facts and figures furnishing that proof 
in the most undeniable manner have been accessible to the 
public since years. But what do the great authors, journal- 
ists, and so called statesmen of the country care to examine 
into the dry tedious statistics which exhibit the condition of 
the working classes! 'Had it been the recovery of Capt, 
Kidd's lost treasure, or some newly dug up information 
about the legend of Pocahontas, or the description of a 
champion's great prize fight, the news stands would be 
flooded with literature about it for years, while the informa- 
tion which the people are as hungry ior as for the daily 
bread, the knowledge of the causes of their own unfortu- 
nate condition, is ignored, or allowed to be buried under of- 
ficial rubbish. 



LESSONS TAUGHT BY THE EMPLOYERS' 
HIGH INCOMES. 

The above income-table should, ever since the data for it 
have been published in the Census Compendium, have been 
laid before both houses of Congress and discussed in every 



A New Gospel ot Labor. < !) 

American home: for it tears with angry hand the veil from 
the scheming work of the millionaire-fortune builders, and 
lays hare the wrongs perpetrated by the latter not only up- 
on the working classes but upon the entire people ; audit 
ihes in a few lessons the most important facts about the 
causes of the labor-troubles. 

1. The first of these lessons is. that the statements made 
in Chapter II of this book about the low daily average 
_ - the workers are fully substantiated. 

For the income table shows that the average daily income 
of the most skilled mechanic, the best paid of all American 
workmen, was, in a bighly prosperous year, no more than 
'•> per day : an income which no reasonable person will 
consider as sufficient for even an unskilled workman of this 
wealthy country. 

'2. The second lesson is, that the excuse of the great in- 
dustrial employers, the owners of the large factories, that 
their incomes are too small to allow them to pay higher 
wages, is false. 

The table shows their incomes to be from a few times to 
nearly a thousand times larger than that of their workmen, 
ranging from a few thousands to over a quarter of a million 
<>f dollars per year tor each factory-owner, a difference irom 
the paltry, average yearly $300 o: the worker that silences 
the great employers' wailings about their own small earn- 

gs 

3. The third lesson the table teaches is, that concentra- 
tion oi capita] in the hands of a lew is detrimental to the 
many. 

It -how- that in every branch of industry where there 
arc many employers with -mall amount- of capital invested 
by each of them, the workers employed are mostly men, 
and receive wages that are above the av< rage; while the in- 



S0 % A New Gospel of Labor. 

come of the employers is not unreasonably high . On the 
other hand, where a few employers have control of an en- 
tire branch of business, each of whom has a large amount 
of capital invested, there their own incomes are unreasona- 
bly high, while the wages of the workers who consist great- 
ly of women and children are below the average. 

In other words, the concentration of capital in the hands 
of a few employers allows them to reap enormous profits 
and to reduce the wages to a minimum starvation income. 
A few instances taken from the table will illustrate this les- 
son most forcibly. 



EMPLOYERSWITH SMALL CAPITAL. 

There were 2188 master ship builders, each having an 
invested capital of $9,505, and employing ten men. The 
employer's yearly average income was $1,656, and that of 
each of the workmen $596, [the highest in the whole list]. 

There were 9184 house builders, each having an invested 
capital of $2,171 and employing 6 men. The employer's 
yearly average income was $1,878, and that of each work- 
man $454. 

There were 28,000 blacksmith bosses, each having an in- 
vested capital of $698, and employing one or two men. 
The employer'? yearly average income was $626, and that 
of each workman $322. 

In the Brick and Tile business, the making of butter and 
cheese, and in the flour, grist, and saw mills, where the 
cheapest kind of unskilled labor is employed at the aver- 
age number of 2 to 10 men to each establishment, the 60,- 
000 employers had each an invested capital of from $2,443 



.1 New Gospel of Labor. 83 

to 87,284, and a yearly average income of from $1,398 to 
$1,903, while the workmen received from $196 to $29S a 
vcar. 



EIM PLOVERS WITH LARGE CAPITAL. 

This proportion between the workman's and the employ- 
er's income changes at once, when the factories with larger 
invested capital are considered. 

In the manufacture of mixed textiles there were 470 fac- 
tories engaged, each having an invested capital [including 
watered stock] of $80,843, and employing 92 workers of 
whom 37 were men. 43 women, and 12 children. The av- 
erage yearly pay of each worker, including the high sala- 
ried superintendents, managers, book-keepers, and foremen, 
was $307, while the average income of each factory-owner 

s ft >,526 a year. 

In the manufacture of wool hats there were 43 factories 
engaged, each having an invested capital [including water- 
-tork] <w **4,088, and employing 127 workers, of whom 
7o were men. 34 women, and 18 children. The average 
yearly pay of each worker, including the high-salaried su- 
perintendents, managers, book-keepers, and foremen, was 
$346, while the average income of each factory-owner was 
$39,792 a year. 

In the manufacture of cotton goods there were 1005 fac- 
tories engaged, each having an invested capital of $218,414 
[including watered stock], and employing 184 workers, of 
wlmm 63 were men, 91 women, and 30 children. The av- 
erage yearly pay of each worker, including the high-sala- 
ried superintendents, managers, book-keepers, and foremen 
was $246, while the average income of each factory-owner 
was $43.76(1 a year. 



82 A New Gospel ol Labor. 

In the manufacture of worsted goods there were 76 facto- 
ries engaged, each having an invested capital of $268,086 
[including watered stock] and empWing 247 w T orkers of 
whom 85 were men, 124 women, and 38 children. The av- 
erage yearly pay of each worker, including the high-sala- 
ried superintendents, managers, book-keepers, and foremen, 
was $302, while the average income of each factory-owner 
was $67,635 a year. 

In the manufacture of rubber boots and shoes there were 
9 lactones engaged, each having an invested capital of 
$269,444 and employing 518 workers of whom 279 were 
men, 221 women, and 18 children. The average yearly 
pay of each worker, including the high-salaried superin- 
tendents, managers, book-keepers, and loremen, was $315, 
while the average income of each factory-owner was $236,- 
530 a year. 

But the best illustration for the operation of both, the 
small and the large capital, is given in the tobacco-business 
which is composed of two branches, the manufacturing of 
cigars, and that of chewing, smoking, and snuff tobacco. 
The cigar-making business is carried on by 7,145 self- work- 
ing bosses, each having $3,028 invested capital, and em- 
ploying 7 workers, of whom 5 were men, 1 woman and 1 
child. Each worker got an average yearly pay of $347, 
while each of the bosses had an income of $2,124. 

In the manufacture of smoking, chewing, and snuff-to- 
bacco there were only engaged 477 factories, each having 
an invested capital of $36,017 ^including watered stock], 
and employing 69 workers of whom 31 were men, 23 wo- 
men, and 15 children. The regulations in these factories 
are notoriously strict, the employes being closely watched 
and driven to furnish all the work possible, the adults by 
money-fines, and the children by the foremen's whip, a 



A New Gospel ol Labor. 83 

practice which has been shown up in the public press, and 
could not be and was not denied. The average earnings of 
these factory slaves, including the high-salaried superin- 
tendents, managers, book-keepers, and foremen, was $196 
a year, [not quite $4 a week], while the average income of 
each factory-owner amounted to $25,106 of blood money 
squeezed out of his workers every year. Surely, history re- 
peats itself, and the slave-labor in the quarries and mines of 
old Italy during the times of the great Roman republic 
seems to have been resurrected in the factory work of the 
great republic of modern times. 



the: war of competition. 

But it is not true, as so many believe, that it is nothing 
but greed for wealth and the desire to live in affluence and 
luxury, which urges all the many thousands of employers 
to ever renewed efforts to obtain still higher profits, to accu- 
mulate still more wealth. There are many just and hu- 
mane men among them who are aware of the injury they 
inflict upon their workmen by underpaying them and upon 
the public by overcharging them, in order to obtain for 
themselves these high profit-rates; and they would, no 
doubt, do otherwise, if there were not some potent reason, 
besides greed and the desire for luxury, compelling them to 
do what they know to be wrong. 

This secret reason lurks in all the unproportionally high 
profits of the invested large capital. It is the law of compe- 
tition which under the present industrial system forces ev- 
ery business-man and employer, no matter whether his 
means and business-facilities be large or small, to keep up 



84 A New Gospel of Labor. 

with all his competitors and, if possible, to undersell them. 
For that purpose the man of limited capital must bend all 
his power of body and soul to manufacture with his inferior 
plant as cheaply, and sell as low, as the wealthy manufac- 
turer. He must, even under this disadvantage, still increase 
his profits so as to accumulate more capital, in order to en- 
large his establishment, increase his machinery, and use 
more steam power. And to do so he hires the cheapest ob- 
tainable labor and pays the lowest wages. 

Thus the vice of greed for more wealth is reinforced by 
the law of self-preservation which makes the less wealthy 
employer follow the rules established by competition and 
imitate the practices of his grasping wealthy competitors 
who, through the force of habit, have long ago lost all scru- 
ples about the wrongs they are inflicting upon their fellow- 
men. Gradually, the humane employer too becomes hard- 
ened, with his increasing wealth , he willingly bends his knee 
before God Mammon, and engages eagerly in the wild chase 
alter more capital, not caring, or not daring to care, how 
soon the wolf of starvation may overtake and devour the 
hindmost, who in this race are always the poor working 
people and the employers who have the smallest amount of 
capital. 

How fast the process of driving .this latter class out oi ex- 
istence is going on, the statistics tell with remarkable exact- 
ness. In the boot and shoe manufacturing business there 
were in 1870 engaged altogether 3151 factories, each with 
an invested capital ol $9525. By 1880 their number had 
gone down to 1959 factories, but each had an invested cap- 
ital of $29,947. In ten years the factories had decreased 
38 per cent; 1192 of them had been unable to increase 
their capital and had succumbed to their wealthier com- 
petitors. 



.4 A ' - tspd ot Labor 85 

In the woolen goods industry there were in 1870 engaged 
2,801 factories, each with an invested capital of $27,347. 
By L880 this number had gone down to 1,990, but each had 
an invested capital oi J48,289. In ten years the lactones 
had decreased 29 per cent : 8.11 of them had succumbed to 
their wealthier competitors. 

In the iron and steel industry there were in 1870 engag- 
£,566 establishments, each with an invested capital of 
|43,516. By L880 their number had gone down to 1,006, 
but each had an invested capital ot $229,873. In ten 
wars these establishments had decreased 73 per cent.; 2,561 
ol them had succumbed to their wealthier competitors. 

But the best instance is furnished by the entire industrial 
and mechanical establishments of the whole United States. 
They numbered in 1870 altogether 252,148, each with an 
invested capital oi ( 6,721. This number had been increas- 
ed during the next 10 years by many thousands of shops 
and factories opened up in the many new towns and vil- 
li - the newly settled Western Territories and Southern 
State.-. But all this increase could not stop the extermina- 
tion ol the small establishments by the wealthier ones; so 
that by 1880 there had only been an increase ot J per cent. 
or L,674 new -hops and factories during the entire 10 years. 
But those that had survived had increased their invested 
capital to $10,993. 

These figures give sufficient proof of the injury which 
the concentration of capital inflicts upon the employers 
with small means. And as, in previous chapters, its detri- 
ct, through increased machinery and the em- 
ployment of cheap labor . upon the wage-workers, and also 
upon the farmers has >een shown, it is evident that un- 
icentratioE oi capital in the hands ol the few 
cause a blight upon the prosperity of the entire people, 



86 A New Gospel of Labor. 

with the only exception of the possessors of large capital? 
who have found a special means of escaping injury in this- 
war of the greater against the smaller wealth. And the 
manner how they do that forms one of the most interesting 
chapters of modern capitalistic development, lor it tells the 
story of the formation of trusts. 



MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS. 

The natural outcome of the constant concentration of 
wealth in the hands of the great capitalistic producers would, 
he, if not checked by some artificial means, the ruin of the 
entire middle class, and the survival ol a number of im- 
mensely rich men each of whom would own all the shops,, 
factories, or similar establishments in his line of business, 
and have a monopoly ol that whole branch of industry. 
This monopoly would dictate its own terms to the working- 
men about their wages and daily working hours, because 
they would have no chance of employment in that line of 
business except with its sole owner. 

The monopoly would regulate its production to suit its 
own advantages, carrying on work for some time by day 
and night with all possible power and machinery, and 
stopping all work lor months thereafter. It would exact 
from the public the most exorbitant prices which a protec- 
tive tariff would permit ol. The monopolist would reap 
enormous profits enabling him to build palaces in this 
country, and to buy castles in Europe wherein to live in 
princely style. Business opposition would not disturb his 
luxurious ease, nor would strikes or labor troubles bother 
his. mind, because the steadily increasing supply of unem- 



A New Gospel of Lalror. 87 

ployed laborers would till his wants in that direction at any 
time; and against any possible riot of the discharged and 
hungry workers the law of the States and Nation would 
protect him. This is the monopolist's paradise which the 
great majority of employers desire to reach. 

The disagreeable thing for the aspirants to a place in the 
monopolistic elysium was the iaet that, in every branch of 
business, it conld only be reached by one member after a 
re struggle between a number of wealthy competitors 
without anyone knowing who would come forth as the 
lucky victor. To avoid this difficulty the shrewd industrial 
capitalists put their wits together, and established a new 
scheme which would land not only one but all of them in 
the coveted paradise, without having to fight the ruinous 
battle for supremacy. The modus operandi is simple and 
practical. 

When most of the production in any branch ol industry 
has become limited to a small number of shop or iactory- 
owners who are nearly on an equal looting regarding their 
invested capital and their facilities to produce, then these 
owners form an association for the purpose ot pooling their 
interests. They either buy out or, by establishing a short 
but ruinous competition, drive out of business their com- 
petitors of small means. Then they stop all competition 
among themselves; they regulate the production according 
to the demand ; they lower the wages of their workmen to 
the lowest notch, and raise the prices demanded lor their 
product lrom the consuming people to the highest possible 
point. As a matter ol course, their profits are enormously 
increased, all opposition is made impossible; and the mo- 
nopolists' paradise has been reached. 

The association which thus brings peace and millionaire- 
fortunes to the wealthv owners ol industrial establishments 



$8 A New Gospel of Labor. 

calls itself, euphoniously, a Trust ; but it is, in iact, a hydra- 
beaded conspiracy which ruins the middle-class business- 
men, impoverishes to a ruinous degree the working classes, 
helps to monopolize other branches of business in the same 
manner, and can onfy end in a small but powerful pluto- 
cracy throttling with an iron hand the prosperity of the 
nation. 

It is not surprising that corporations which have such 
vicious ends in view should use the basest of vices, false- 
hood and hypocrisy, to gain those ends. This has been 
done zok the formation of almost every trust in so successful 
a manner, and is being done yet in order to deceive the peo- 
ple about the pernicious purposes of these combinations. 
Particular efforts in this direction have been made with a 
view or hiding the enormous incomes not only of these 
trusts and monopolies, but of all the great capitalistic em- 
ployers, or to surround them with a veil of false sophistry 
which would render them unrecognizable. These efforts 
have been so successful that even now the very classes who 
suffer most under the gigantic, millions-bearing employers' 
profits since years, do not understand the cause of their suf- 
ferings, but can only instinctively feel whence they emanate.. 



WH EIRE DO THE LAR<JE! PROHTSCOME 

FROM ? 

It is in reference to this matter that the above income ta- 
ble renders its most important service, by stripping the 
great employers' big profits of all the false sophistries sur- 
rounding them; by showing the taking of these profits to 
be, from a moral as well as an economical standpoint, en- 



.1 Ni w Gospel <>t Labor. 89 

tirely indefensible; and by exposing the 1 secret ol theii* ori- 
gin in such a manner that the truth can. hereafter, not be 
hidden any more. 

Most all the great capitalistic employers deny that they 
receive any profits from their industrial establishments, but 
claim that all which is left them of the value of- their prod- 
uct after deducting the cost of production is legitimate in- 
st on their invested capital and payment lor their own 
valuable labor as employers. A fixed rate for cither of 
these two sources of income lor the employers has never 
yet been stated; but it has been established as an unwritten 
law among them that they are justly entitled to all they 
can get. to every cent they can grind out of the workmen 
by paying them the lowest possible wages, and out of the 
consuming public by charging them the highest obtainable 
pria - 

The valuable labor of the employers whose ability has 
built up large industrial establishments has existed in pre- 
vious times, in the infancy of American industry. But it 
has become almost entirely a thing of the past, since the 
educational advantages of modern times and the increased 
struggle for an existence among the educated workers have 
tilled the markets with men of ability and experience who 
can. successfully, manage any industrial establishment in 
the United States and yet may he hired for such low sala- 
ries as do not compare at all with the yearly profits of 
|20,000, f 50,000, or H00,000 which many modern inex- 
perienced employers, with the aid ol their hired superin- 
tendents and foremen, draw out of the labor of their em- 
ploy* 3 

If those who so persisteutly advocate the theory of the 
employers' valuable labor would take the pains to get ac- 
quainted with tie- mental abilities of the workmen, they 



90 A New Gospel o1 Labor. 

might find in almost every trade-union men who could take 
the place of their employers and manage the latters' busi- 
ness with as much, ii not more success, than its owners are 
able to do. 

Furthermore, as the income-table shows, all the principal 
mechanical branches oJ industry requiring from their own- 
ers more skill, experience, knowledge, and responsibility 
than the iactory work, brought them the lowest profits 
amounting to less than $2,000 a year, while the factories 
paid their owners yearly profits that went into the many 
thousands of dollars. Why should that be? 

If the man who runs a saw-mill has a yearly clear profit 
income of $1,400 only, why should the man who manufac- 
tures wood-pulp receive $14,000? If the carpenter and 
contractor who builds the magnificent American homes and 
business-blocks has a clear profit income of $1,700 only, 
why should the manufacturer of wool hats receive $34,000 ? 
And if the master shipwright who builds the American 
ships that for speed and beauty have won the admiration 
of the world, and who pays his workmen $596 a year, gets 
himself only a clear profit income of $1,000, why should the 
manufacturer of rubber boots and shoes that are made by 
machinery which is run by girls and children receive an 
income of $218,000 a year? 

The factory-owners can, surely, not expect that these 
princely incomes of theirs be considered as well-earned re- 
muneration for valuable labor rendered in the process of 
production, when the market price of the more valuable 
and skillful labor of the master mechanic is worth less by 
many thousands of dollars. The claim that the great em- 
ployers' big profits are payments for services rendered is, 
therefore, unreasonable and unfounded, and cannot be 
maintained, leaving as the only remaining explanation for 



A New Gospel oj Labor. 91 

the Factory owners' enormous business incomes their asser- 
tion that the latter represents the legitimate interest and 
risk percentage on the invested capital. 

This is the capitalistic stronghold around which the war 
between capital and Labor has been waged ever since the la- 
bor question has, m this country, come into existence. And 
it is, therefore, not to be wondered at, that this claim has 
been defended by the employers' advocates with a fanatic 
zeal and presented to the people in such a favorable light, 
and so continuously, that their theory has found general 
belief, and that those who have doubted its correctness have 
been stigmatized as dangerous agitators and enemies oi the 
Commonweal. The statistics tell in very plain language 
who. in this dispute, is right or wrong, as can easily be 
shown. 

The capitalistic theory is that the employer's capital forms 
the most important factor in the economical household of a 
people; that it is the famous goose that lays the golden egg 
of prosperity by giving employment to the idle; that it has 
been accumulated by the employer through his own hard 
work, by close economy, and often by suffering privations, 
and that, when he incurs the risk of losing it by invest- 
ment in industrial undertakings for the benefit of the work- 
men and people, he is entitled to as liberal [which means as 
high a rate of interest as he is able to obtain. 

That capital plays a very important role in the present 
industrial system is true: but that it is absolutely necessa- 
ry as the means of employment is contradicted by histori- 
cal facts. By going back about 450 years in the history of 
Europe, it will be seen that, at that time, the present mode 
of production did not exist, and that among the high born 
a- well ;i- the lowly the accumulation of capital was un- 
known, except in isolated cases. Tin- feudal lord- lived 



92 A New Gospel of Labor. 

with their armies of retainers from hand to mouth on the 
income of their lands; and the larm workers and mechanics 
of those days lived without the assistance of any capitalis- 
tic employers in more affluence and secured circumstances 
than the workmen of the present time. 

That period is called by old and modern writers the 
golden age ol the producing classes ; and although it must 
be conceded that the mode of production used in that time 
would not be adequate to the wants of modern civilized 
life, the fact remains that the golden age of the producing 
classes ceased with the introduction of the system of pro- 
duction with the aid of capital, and that the iron age of 
want and poverty took its place. 

But the discussion of the greater or smaller usefulness 
of capital in the industrial lile of the nation is insignificant 
alongside ot the question : Is the industrial capital what it is 
represented to be, the savings of the employer ? And has 
it got the right to claim the enormous interest rates which 
it demands, and at the cost of the great majority oi the 
people receives ? 

The last column of the income-table gives the key-note 
to the answer. It states the periods of time in which the 
clear profits of each of the owners of the various industrial 
establishments doubled or replaced his entire invested capi- 
tal [including watered stock]. From these calculations have 
been excluded a few branches of business, in which the in- 
terest of the average invested capital was not sufficient for 
the employers to live on, so that they were compelled to 
use all, or a great part of their clear profits for their sup- 
port; while the remaining shop and factory-owners on the 
list were well enabled, as the frugal and economical em- 
ployers that they claim to be, easily to live on their interests, 
and save and further invest their clear profits. 



A Xew Gospel of Labor. 93 

The number of years exhibited in the column giving the 
period of time in which the clear profits would double the 
capital invested by the different employers varies consider- 
ably. In the great majority oi* the cases, however, this time 
is so short, that the profits bear unmistakably the brand of 
the disreputable pawn-brokers profit rates; while a few 
have a less usurious appearance. 

But even these few exceptions are, most likely, only ap- 
parent ones when the watered stock is taken in considera- 
tion which no doubt most, if not all, the larger amounts of 
invested capital include; for the watered stock scheme is 
used especially for the purpose of deceiving the public 
by an apparently large sum of invested capital, so that the 
employers' prorits may appear smaller and give them an ex- 
cuse for paying the workmen less wages and charging the 
consumers higher prices, than they could do if their true 
prorits were known. Under these circumstances it may 
xvell be claimed that the above income table throughout fa- 
vors the employers, stating their incomes at too low a figure, 
and giving a longer period of time for the clear profits to 
double the invested capital, than was really needed. 

But the years' column, most significant as it is, does not 
fully illustrate the ultimate relations between the employers' 
clear prorits and the invested capital. In order to obtain 

a complete insight into the same, it is necessary to follow 
the employers' profits from year to year for a longer period 
of Hj - for instance, 10 years, from one census to the 

next one. And as this cannot be done for every branch 
38, a tew ot the most important ones, the iron and 
steel industry, the manufacture of woolen goods, and of 
boots and shoes, may be thus examined, whose clear profits 
doubled the invested capital in 7^, 3| and 2J years, re- 
stively, and which therefore, nearly represent every class 
oi profits 



94 A Neiv Gospel of Labor. 

The following calculations may seem tedious reading, but 
they ought to be read, nevertheless, and carefully considered 
by all who desire to understand the present deplorable con- 
dition of the people of the United States, and especially by 
those who are possessed of patriotism enough to be willing 
to assist in ameliorating this condition. The reader will be 
rewarded for his pains ; for the figures hereinafter submit- 
ted give him a clear view of the cancer which gnaws at the 
nation's entrails and is the main cause of her diseased finan- 
cial and industrial condition. 

Of the industries enumerated in the income-table the 
iron and steel manufacturing business is, through the large 
amount of capital invested in it, and through its usefulness, 
one of the most important industries. It is very highly 
protected by the tariff, which according to the teachings of 
many prominent statesmen is an indication that it is a weak 
industry, struggling hard against foreign competition. This 
conclusion seems to be borne out by its low profit percent- 
age, the lowest, with one or two unimportant exceptions, of 
an}' business on the income-table. The iron and steel in- 
dustry furnishes, consequently, in the discussion of the capi- 
talistic employers' profits the most favorable field of invest- 
igation for the emplo} r ers' side, and the latter have, there- 
fore, no reason to raise any objection against the result of 
this examination. 

The following tables show by means of the census statis- 
tics of 1870 and 1880 [irom which the data for the inter- 
vening years have been obtained by proportioning them 
hetween the two end years years of the decade] the income 
of the owners of all the iron and steel manufacturing es- 
tablishments of the United States from year to year; 
Table I covering the period from June 1869, to June '75, 
while Table II stops at June 1880. 



A Stir Gospel of Labor. 95 

The headings of the columns of the tables contain a suf- 
ntlv plain statement of the hitters' contents, that only a 
few short explanations need to be added. Firstly, the cost 
of production includes the wages and salaries paid to all em- 
ployes and officials of the companies who own the different 
establishments. Secondly, the total profit thrown off by 
the business as the earnings of the invested capital, has 
been divided into two parts, a yearly 7 per cent, dividend 
<m the whole capital, and an extra profit outside and above 
the dividend. The last column shows an accumulation of 
these extra profits at the end of each year together with 7 
per cent, profit which the owners are assumed to have real- 
ized annually out of the investment of these profits in land, 
buildings, bank-stocks, and in similar ways. Thirdly, gold 
which was at par in 1880, was at a premium of 25 per cent, 
in 1870 so that, for the purpose of making any calculations 
from both these census years, the money value of 1870 had 
to be, and has here been reduced accordingly. 



A New Gospel of Labor. 



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A New Gospel of Labor. $7 

This table shows that the profits realized out of this bus- 
iness, during six years only, had given their owners in the 
first place a handsome yearly dividend on their invested 
capital, which dividend, although apparently only a 7 per 
vtnt. one. was. in fact, through, the many millions of dollars 
oi watered stock contained in their capital, considerable 
higher, probably between 12 and '20 per cent., and summed 
up altogether to 173,104,162, 

In the second place the owners had received an extra 
profit of $194,087,626 which was a million dollars more 
than the entire capital invested in 1875 : the total profits 
for the six years on an average invested capital of $174,- 
000,000 amounting to $2<>7, 191,788. 

Henceforth, tl** iron a/nd *tcel manufacturing business of the 
!' Ued States wets carried on by their owners with a plant and 
working capital that had not cost them a cent, but left them 
11,000,000 of profits vet on hand, besides the $78,000,000 
3ix year-' dividends in their pockets. Table II shows 
how, thereafter, this business turned profits amounting to 
millions upon millions of dollars into the hands of the 
owners, of which they put every year a small amount into 
the business to enlarge the plants and working capital while 
the balance was invested elsewhere at an assumed profit- 
rate ot 7 per cent.: the accumulations of these profits being 
shown tor each year in the last column of the table 



98 



A New Gospel of Labor. 



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A New Gospel of Labor 90 

In the Last five years from 1ST") to 1880 the business Bad 
given it- owners as a profit on no invested capital of theirs, the 
sum of $231,387,805. Or in the whole eleven years from 
June 1869 to June '80 an invested capital of $174,000,000 
had thrown oil" a total profit of $498,579,593 to the em- 
ployers while they had reduced the wages of their work- 
ers from $419 in 1870 to $394 in 1880! 

And it these profit-calculations were continued to the 
present year 1894, then it would be seen, that from June 
L875, the date when the last cent of the owners' invested 
capital had been paid back to them, they had drawn out of 
the business more than $1,000,000,000— one billion dollars— 
as -veal led "legitimate profit-interest on their hard-earned 
invested capital,'' when in fact they had not a dollar of 
their own or of borrowed money invested in the whole in- 
dustry during all these years. 

But besides this immense wealth they still hold in their 
possession the whole business with its many costly plants 
worth hundreds of milions ot dollars, w T hich have been paid 
back to them by the clear profits many times, and are reap 
ing out of them still further continuous interests and w T ill 
: on doing so in the luture. 

If it be remembed that all these astounding profits have 
been received out of a so-called struggling industry with a 
low profit-rate, it must certainly be interesting to know what 
of incomes the many other still better paying branches 
of business have thrown off lor their owners, whose capital 
doubled out of the clear profits in a much shorter period 
of time, as lor instance the woolen goods manufactory, a 
great and prosperous industry, whose capital of 1880 would 
have been repaid in a lew months less than four years. 

This business had in June 1869 an invested capital of 
$79, 059, 625 to which their owners are assumed to have 



100 A New Gospel of Labor. 

added yearly $1,703,594 [to bring the capital up to the 
amount invested in 1880]. The profit on this investment 
until June 1873 amounted to a 7 per cent dividend of $22,- 
852,203, and an extra accumulated profit of $81,203,414, or 
a total profit in four years of $104,055,617. 

The extra profits returned to the owners in those four 
years their whole invested copital, except a small rest of 
$2,966,993 which was paid back in the first two months of 
the next year; so that, from August '73 on, the business was 
carried on with a plaint and working capital that cost the owners 
not a cent, but yielded them until June 1880, in 6 years and 
10 months, a total profit of$238,522,874, while the workers 
employed in this industry received as an average which 
includes all the big salaries of the companies' superintend- 
ents, managers, and other officers, $284 a year. 

And if these calculations be extended to the present year, 
they would show the business to have paid from August '73 
to June '94 in 21 years a clear profit of $1,700,000,000— 
nearly one and three-quarters billions of dollars as the em- 
ployers' "legitimate" profit interests on no capital of theirs at 
all, because the capital invested by them once had been re- 
turned to them through the extra profits which they had 
received during the years 1869 to '73. 

But even the enormous profits thrown off to the owners 
of the woolen goods factories are not the highest ones. The 
proportionate profit-rate of half the industries named in our 
income-table is larger yet, which can be seen from the fact 
that their capital is doubled out of the clear profits in from 
1 to 3 years. 

The boot and shoe manufacturing business, an example 
of this kind, had in 1870 an invested capital of $30,015,- 
215, which was yearly increased by the owners by $1,297,- 
881. In two years this business brought its owners besides 



A New Goi Labor. 101 

a 7 percent, dividend oi 14,292,981, also an extra profit of 
§33,747,599 which paid back to them their entire invested 
capital oi $31,313,096, and still left them an extra profit 
balance oi $2,434,503. And all this in two years only; so 
that, from June 1 > 7 1 on, the owners had not a. cent of 
money invested in the business but still drew, until June 
L880, no less than $211,413,180 out of it, or up to 1894, at 
the same profit-rate. $973,000,000 — or nearly a billion of 
dollars— as 23 years' profit on a plant worth $46,000,000 of 
dollars, but which did not cost its owners a solitary cent. 

The workers in this business received in 1870 an average 
pay oi $371, and in 1880 $384 per annum. 

But t<> show that this profit greed of the industrial kings 
and barons is actually boundless, the rubber boots business 
must be mentioned in which the clear profits made in the 
year 1880 paid back the invested capital of *2,425 5 000 in 1 
year and three months, and thereafter rolled millions upon 
millions ot dollars every year into the pockets of the few 
owners oi the nine rubber-boots factories, making all of 
them in a lew years millionaires, while their 4,(362 employes 
ived an average yearly pay of £315, giving each of 
them an income of 86 — eighty-six — cents a day! 



the: final truth about the: million- 
aire-fortuneisof the! eim ployers. 

Tie-.- figures exhibit tie- secret process by which during 
tie- lasl 30 ;. the labor of the mine, shop, and 

• ry worker.-, millionaires and multi-millionaires Have 
sprung up by the hundreds and thousands. This is the man- 
ner in which tl, Pullman-, and other Industrial 



102 A New Gospel of Labor. 

kings have been created who, although every cent of their 
own money ever invested by them in their business has 
been repaid to them a hundred and a thousandfold, and 
although every hour of their own labor has been remuner- 
ated with princely pay, — still hold the great industrial 
plants and establishments of the country in their grasp and 
by their legal right and title to the same exact as the mod- 
ern Shy locks, compared to whom the one of old is a ridicu- 
lously small pigmy, their pound of flesh from every one of 
their millions ol workers, men, women, and children, and 
not only once, but every day for years, and for generations 
to come. 

These employers with the millionaire-incomes are the 
first ones who, in hard times, inaugurate wage-reductions, lest 
they lose their interest on an invested capital which has 
been paid back to them many years ago. And when the 
impoverished toilers in view of their already degraded con- 
dition, and knowing that they are being cheated out of the 
fruits of their labor, refuse to accept, as their wages, crumbs 
where they have a right to demand loaves,— then the in- 
dustrial millionaires and barons will promptly stop all 
work, close their factories, and proceed to starve the resist- 
ing workers into submission. Or, if this resistance should 
prove to be more obdurate than expected, then the great 
factory-owners, well aware of the peculiarity of the law 
which protects with all its mighty power their property 
rights while ignoring the right of the working people to a 
living, will rather provoke industrial disturbances of such 
magnitude as to shake and endanger the very foundations 
of the republic than to give up a small part ot their ill-got- 
ten profits to those who have produced the same by their 
labor, and who, by the supreme law of equity and humani- 
ty, are first and before anybody entitled to a just and fair 



A New Gospel of Labor. 103 

share in them, which as the statistics plainly show they arc 
far from receiving. 

Of course the objection will be raised by the employers' 
defenders that their profits are not ill-gotten, and our in- 
come-tables meet with all sorts of flimsy criticism. It will 
be argued that in the profit calculation the owners of most 
of the manufacturing establishments have been considered 
as non-working capitalists, although many of them are hard 
working individuals who ought to have been allowed reas- 
onable salaries, the summed up amounts of which would 
have greatly reduced their profits. 

Supposing that to be true, although it may safely be as- 
sumed that in making his statement to the census-enumera- 
tor the capitalistic employer has included his own labor, in 
some form or another, in his cost of production, even then 
the argument falls to the ground before the fact that the 
payment of a tew hundred or even of a thousand salaries 
would have reduced the enormous millions-profits but very 
little, would have extended the period within which the in- 
vested capital was doubled by the clear profits but a very 
short time, and would have changed nothing in the iact 
that lor years thereafter the owner, be it a company or an 
individual, had drawn his profit-interests at the same old 
rate, as before his invested capital had been returned to 
him. 

The objection will, furthermore, be raised that these av- 

rofits above stated were not received by many of the 

A'ealthy employers but only by those possessed of more 

capital. That is undoubtedly true: but instead ol changing 

the result of our calculations it simply shows that the prof- 

; the great capitalistic shop and factory owners was, in 

fact, above the average stated in our income tables. 

And still other objections are answered by tin.' large 



104 A New Gospel of Labor. 

amount of watered stock contained in the invested capital, 
an amount which h known would swell the employers' 
real profits in many thousands of cases to such proportions 
as would hardly seem credible. 

May the defenders of the present mode of production ob- 
ject ever so much, they cannot bring forth any valid rea- 
son by which the enormous employers' profits may be ex 
cused. No other legitimate business exists, excepting per- 
haps that of the pawn-brokers, in which similarly high 
profit interests are extorted, so that, apart from the dictates 
of justice and humanity, even irom a plain, every day bus- 
iness standpoint they must be condemned as grossly exorbi- 
tant and usurious ; and the employers' claim, that their bus- 
iness-incomes are only a reasonable risk-percentage and le- 
gitimate profit interest proves itself a falsehood and a 
fraud. 

But that is not the only lesson which these income-in- 
vestigations teach. They point out very clearly that in the 
same manner in which the profit-interests of 1870 and 1880 
have repaid the invested capital in a very few years, the 
capital invested before that time has, to a great extent, been 
also paid back ; so that, in fact, the largest part of all the 
capital at present engaged in the industries of the country 
contains not a particle any more of the employers' original 
own earnings, but is an accumulation of the compound 
profit interests of many previous years. 

Furthermore, when in comparison to the employers' im- 
ense yearly profits the disgracelully small incomes of the 
workers are considered, it becomes evident, that in order to 
produce those profits year after year the working people 
had to labor for such low and insufficient wages as to ex- 
pose themselves and their families to constant privation and 
want; and that therefore the high profits which have thus 



.i '\> Gospel of Labor L05 

been obtained by moans of cheap and underpaid labor have 
swallowed up the health and happiness, the life and blood 
oi millions of workers and oi their family members. 
And when all these facts are put together, then the lighl 
truth at last breaks through and dispels the cloud of 
mystery surrounding the industrial capital and the million- 
aire fortunes made out oi the production of the country, 
and it shows that they are not the "sacred hard earnings" 
of the employers, but an accumulation, during many years, of 
that part of the earnings of tht workers which was withheld 
from them by the profit-greedy < mployers under all sorts of pre- 
tenses, and by the right qfthi mightier over the dependent weaker 



THE! ABSORPTION OF THE! NATIONAL 
WEALTH. 

To complete the picture oi' the grievous wrong which the 
Unjus si m of endless profits inflicts not only upon the 
working classes, but upon the people at large, one more 
phase of it must be considered, namely, the rapidity and 
completeness with which, like a malignant sore, it eats into 
and - the prosperity of the nation by drawing the 

national wealth — the land, the money, the natural resources 
of the country — away from its natural owners, the massi - 
of the people, and concentrating it in the hands of the lew. 
These few are those singular economical abnormities of 
modern time-, the millionaire- who. like the phosphores- 
cent light that, born of decay, Hits up and hovers over 
swamps and morasses — pring up here and there from the 
ranks of the people, trying to inveigle the inexperienced 
into the belief that their appearance means national safety 



106 A New Gospel of Labor. 

and solidity, but indicating to the observer who knows the 
cause of the existence of these millionaires, that stagnation 
and putrefaction have set in on the social and economical 
body of the nation and threaten its once robust life with 
rapid decay. 

To show, by statistical proof, in how thorough a manner 
this wealth-absorption has been and is being carried on, 
and how little it has leit to the people, our general income 
list must once more be consulted. Of the 46 industries 
there enumerated eight comprise the branches of black- 
smithing, carpentering, brick and tile making, lumber-saw- 
ing, cigar-making, cheese and butter-making, grist and 
flour milling, and ship-building in whose establishment? the 
capital invested and the profits of the owners were too small 
to classify the latter with the great capitalistic employers. 

The remaining 38 industries embraced 35,000 shops and 
factories with an invested, more or less watered, capital of 
$1,425,277,486, which obtained from June '79 to June '80, 
after deducting the cost of production, a total profit of 
$420,125,834 [which in the income table has been divided 
up between the single establishments to show their average 
individual incomes]. This profit was increased from year 
to year through the enlargements of the plants and work- 
ing capital out of the profits of the owners. But this in- 
crease may be disregarded to simpliiy the following calcu- 
lations. 

With the profit- rate of the census-year '79 to '80 the 
owners had received, by June '83, a 7 per cent, profit-divi- 
dend amounting to $399,077,696, and an extra profit out- 
side and above the dividend of $1,422,000,000, which paid 
back to the owners in short four years their entire invested 
capital. And from then on, during the 11 years up to the 
present time, these 35,000 manufacturing establishments 



A New Gospel of Labor. 107 

threw off to their owners no Less than, S 10,000,000,000— 
ten billions of dollars — one-sixth part of the whole national 
wealth of. the people of the United States, as the profits on 

plants and working capita] in which the owners had not a 
cent of money invested. 

And as these 38 industries form only a part of the whole 
manufacturing business of the country [35,000 out ol 253,- 
000 establishments], and as billions of dollars of similar 
profit-accumulations had been obtained by the owners of 
these same lactones from 1S70 to 18S0, and other billions 
of dollars from 1860 to 1870, it is plainly to be seen that 
these aggregated profit-accumulations of the last 30 years 
comprise the overwhelmingly greater part of the national 
wealth which thus has become the property of the million- 
aires and multi-millionaires, the industrial kings and bar- 
on- of the republic, while some 50 millions of its people 
have by this process lost their inheritance, and become de- 

— - I and impoverished. 

That this concentration ol the national wealth in the 
hands of the lew has adopted even greater dimensions than 
the profit calculations in this chapter indicate, cannot be 
doubted when it is considered that the opportunities for 
profitable investments of capital have been exceedingly ia- 
vorable during the last 30 years while half of the country 
was opened up for settlement and cash money always in 
demand at a high rate of interest. 

Thus the wealthy employers used their * 'profit-savings" 
to start banks; to organize insurance companies; to buy 
up the stock of well-paying railroad, telegraph, and steam- 
boat lines; to lay out new towns and cities and sell the lots, 
or build business blocks and tenement houses in order to 
rent them to workingmen, a favorite modern trick ol bring- 
ing, in Pullman style, the wages just paid to the worker- 
back again into the employers' pockets. 



108 A New Gospel of Labor. 

In, this; manner the investments became the cause of 
throwing many other well paying branches of business in- 
to the hands of the factory owners and of increasing their 
incomes to proportions of which the public has not the 
faintest idea. 

But the worst, most dangerous part of the endless profit- 
accumulations is the fact that it gave the employers the 
means and opportunity to bay up aud acquire all the natu- 
ral resources of the country, which they did with an insa- 
tiable greed, and not only in their own states, but all 
through the United States, wherever through the opening of 
new territories mineral, coal, and timber-land, quarries and 
water-power, and the shores of navigable waters could be ob- 
tained, especially from the government, whose laws were 
even shaped and amended to iacilitate that purpose. 

The danger as well, as the great outrage connected with 
these acquisitions on the part of the great capitalistic em- 
ployers is the fact, that it enables the latter and their off- 
spring ! by use or the wealth wrung unjustly and dishonest- 
ly Irom the working and consuming people] to control, for 
many years to come, the whole national production and to 
gain ever new sources o. wealth, thereby condemning the 
now living and the vet unborn generations of the masses 
of the people generally, and of the working classes especial- 
ly, to pay tribute and toll on everything they need to eat, 
drink, use, or wear, and especially on the privilege to work 
for a living, — a toll that amounts already to billions oi dol- 
lars a year, that goes into the pockets of the owners of the 
country's wealth and resources, and renders the people the 
slaves of the great industrial employers and of their heirs 
and successors. 

For the information of those who think that such a con- 
clusion from the present condition oi economical affairs of 



.-1 New Gospel ol Labor. 100 



the United States is imaginary, or at least exaggerated, an 
official statement may here be inserted which endorses ev- 
erything that has been said in this and previous chapters 
about the absorption of the national wealth. 

In May 1804 [when the manuscript of this book had just 

n given into the hands of the printer; an extract of the 

census statistics ol 1890, prepared by a special agent of the 

-us department, was extensively published by the press 

of the whole country, which extract contained the following 

information : 

Of the 63,000,000 people living in 1800 in the United 
States the 57,000,000 farmers, workers, and middle class- 
people, forming 01 per cent, of the whole population, owned 
property worth $17,400,000,000, or a trifle more than one 
quarter of the entire national wealth. The remaining 
5,270,000 persons were the members of the moneyed class 
who formed per cent, of the whole population, and owned 
$42,600,000,000 worth of property, or a trifle less than 
three-quarters of the entire national wealth. And of this 
hitter class the 4.047 millionaire-families, comprising 20,- 
000 men. women, and children, and forming one thirty- 
third part of one per cent, of the whole population, were 
worth $12,000,000,000, or one-fifth of the entire national 
wealth, or as much as formed the whole possessions of 
4(),(Hio nod of the farmers, workers, and middle-class people. 

In the face ol these latest census statistics not another 
word needs to be written to prove the subject-matter of this 
chapter. These figures speak volumes; and they speak in 
tones of thunder, in order, at last, to arouse the people to 
the consciousness of their economical condition. 



110 A Neiv Gospel of Labor. 

the: nation'ssecurity. 

But it may well be asked : 

Why should such a condition of affairs exist in this 
great and wealthy country ? Is it humane to grind the 
workers, the majority of the people, into the dust of bitter 
poverty to increase the unearned usurious profit-rates of the 
employers? Is it just to let the nation's wealth be monopo- 
lized by a few that the many millions become their slaves? 
Is it patriotic to allow the fundamental principles ol the re- 
public which promises to secure the greatest happiness for 
the largest possible number to be destroyed and reversed? Is 
it necessary for the nation's welfare and prosperity that her 
workers should be enslaved through want of work and low 
wages, her middle class be driven into bankruptcy, and a 
few millionaires own almost the entire national wealth? 

No, and a thousand times no ! It is not humane, it is 
not just, it is not patriotic, it is not necessary that this 
should be so. 

Humanity ordains that every man born has the right to 
live, that he is, there. ore, entitled to work or employment of 
some kind, and to such remuneration for his labor as to 
grant him and his family a fair living. 

Justice requires that no preferred class, be it an hereditary 
aristocracy or a modern plutocracy, be permitted to keep up 
or set up a barrier of ancient customs or industrial systems 
by which any man is deprived of his right to work and to 
enjoy an existence which is worthy of a human being, es- 
pecially when living in a highty civilized, christian country. 

Patriotism forbids, that this free people be divided into a 
small caste of millionaire demigods and millions of enslav- 
ed workers, which latter must support the former in their 
exalted superhuman position, — a division which cannot fail 
to destroy our boasted equality of all men before the law, 



A New Gospel of Labor. 1 1 1 

and undermine the very foundations of a republican form 
government. 

The nation's security imperatively demands that an in- 
dustrial system which produces the grave social, economi- 
cal, and political evils under which the majority of the peo- 
ple snti'er be abolished. And it, therefore, becomes the duty 
of all the citizens who follow the dictates of humanity and 
patriotism, who place charity toward all men above selfish 
greed, and virtue above vice, to assist in the introduction of 
a new mode of production, a new gospel of labor, which 
will benefit not only one class of the people, but which, by 
curbing the prevailing vices of avarice and selfishness, will 
lead to a higher and more perfect lite the rich and the poor 
alike, and thus benefit the entire nation. 



END OK BOOK 1. 



BOOK TWO 



CHAPTER I. 



How Through Fire, Sword, and the Hangman's Rope 
the Present Industrial System Has Been Forced Up- 
on the People of England. — And How in the United 
States It Has Been Nursed and Fostered by the Leg- 
islators with the Consent of the People. 

Before undertaking the difficult task of proposing a leg- 
islative bill which is to introduce a better industrial system, 
it is proper to examine into the manner in which the pres- 
ent pernicious one has been called into existence. The 
time spent in such an investigation is well rewarded by the 
iamiliarity thereby obtained by the reader with the charac- 
teristics and evils of the now employed mode of production, 
and by the information thus imparted to those many peo- 
ple, both workmen and others, who are not aware that the 
present condition of all the producers in every civilized 
country has been built up artificially, but who, from false 
religious teachings and ignorance of economical principles, 
consider the modern mode of production an outcome of un- 
changeable laws of nature, or believe a deity to be responsi- 
ble for what is, in fact, only the work of selfish and design- 
ing man. 

The erroneous opinion of the people who believe a ma- 
jority of men to have been condemned by God or nature to 



A Ni w Gospel of Labor. 1 1 3 

wretched poverty, and that this must be so, and always has 
been so; that opinion is thoroughly refuted by a study of 
the economical history of the civilized nations, which 
teaches that the industrial system at present in vogue is 
only a few hundred years old and that, before it had been 
adopted, the condition of the producing classes was, lor sev- 
eral centuries, better than it is at the present time. 

A review oi the manner how people lived beiore the mod- 
em era of production had commenced is therefore necessa- 
ry : and as the United States are not old enough to reach 
back to that time, we must turn to England, the mother 
country, whence the present industrial system has come 
here, and where its beginning and gradual development in 
all its phases and changes have, probably on account of 
that country's insular location, assumed a more perfect 
iorm than in any other European country.* 



THE GOLDEN AGE! OF ENGLAND'S PRO- 
DUCING CLASSES. 

In the latter part of the 14th century serfdom had in 
England practically ceased to exist, and its population was 
a nation ot freeman the majority of whom were dependent 
upon themselves for a living. What that living was, there 
are ample records and chronicles lelt to tell us. The aris- 
icy had not yet commenced to turn its attention to 
money-making, but prided itself in keeping as large a num- 



*In this chapter numerous quotations have been used and extracts 
made from the ist volume of the famous treatise on political economy 
by Karl Marx, "The Capital." written in London, England, about the 
year 1865. 



114 A New Gospel of Labor. 

ber of retainers as they could provide for. The farming 
population consisted of the numerous farmers whose homes 
dotted the Norman baronies, and of 160,000 small free- 
holders who owned their little homes and whose income is 
from reliable sources given at from $300 to $350 per year, 
or as much as the average income oi the United States 
i arm-owner in the prosperous year 1880. There were, be- 
sides, a limited number of farm -laborers who had each a 
cottage with iour or more acres of land, and were entitled, 
to the use of the Commons, [the public land belonging to 
villages and towns], for pasture and to obtain their fuel 
lrom the same. These laborers worked 10 hours a day, and 
it has been calculated by good authorities, that it took one 
of their work days to provide the necessary means of living 
for themselves and families lor iour days. 

The mechanics' condition was not less favorable. If 
among the farmers the occasional large land-holder was a 
scarcity, so was in the industrial field the employer with 
small means the rule without an exception. The wholesale 
manufacturer did not exist. The guild regulated the num- 
ber of journeymen and apprentices which each employer 
might keep, thus preventing an over-supply of workmen 
and a glutting of the market by over-production. The 
wages were consequently high, and the hours of the work- 
ing clay reasonably limited, ten hours forming the custom- 
ary working time in the shops as in the field, and one 
day's work was sufficient to supply the worker in the city, 
and his family with the necessaries of life for three days. 
That with a population of agricultural and industrial work- 
ers in such favorable circumstances commerce was brisk 
and the merchants had a profitable business, is a matter 
of course ; and it is, therefore, not surprising, that authors 
who lived shortly after this period called it the "golden age" 
of the people of England. 



.1 A 7 < w Gospel of Labor. 115 

There were no strikes, boycotts, or lock-outs practiced in 

those »lavs. nor were trusts and private monopolies in exist- 
ence. The nuans ol production [consisting in those times 
only of the land and the raw material] were not in the 
hands of the few, but easily attainable by large numbers of 
the people. The production was carried on by numerous 
small bosses who made an easy living by supplying the 
want of the nation, but who had neither the lacilities nor 
the de-ire to accumulate capital and produce on speculation. 
There could not be any millionaire-bosses in the country at 
that time, but the whole nation was prosperous ; and poor- 
houses, paupers, and vagrants were unknown. 

And yet it is from this period oi England's history that 
its first labor legislation dates, known as the first statute of 
laborers, issued by Edward III. in the year 1349. This 
circumstance might throw a doubt upon the correctness of 
the statement just made about the favorable condition of 
the English workmen, were it not for the remarkable fact 
that the labor-law was not desired by the workingmen, as is 
the custom of modern times, to obtain protection against 
their employers: but the English bosses of the 14th century 
had this statute enacted to protect themselves, as they called 
it. against their too prosperous workmen, by establishing a 
certain number of hours [about eleven] as a working day, 
and by fixing the maximum wages to be received by the 
work* 

The fact that such a law had been enacted at that time 
the mechanics and laborers, endorses all that has 
p written by English authors about the "golden times" 
enjoyed by tin- English producers in the 14th century, and 
shows unmistakably that the condition ol the latter during 
that "barbarous" age was bitter than the condition of the 
producing classes of the United states was in L880 under 
the present high state of civilizatian. 



116 A New Gospel of Labor. 

But King Edward's statute was not obeyed, and there- 
lore, nearly 150 years later, another similar law was enact- 
ed by Henry VIII, in 1496, which ordained that during 
the summer months, Irom March to September, all artificers 
[mechanics], and iarm laborers should work from 5 in the 
morning to 7 or 8 at night with these intermissions, viz: 
1 hour lor breakfast, 1J hour lor dinner, and \ hour for 
alternoon lunch. In the winter the work should commence 
at the same morning hour, with the. same intermissions, but 
to last till darkness set in, that is about 4 or 5 o'clock. It 
was intended by this regulation to extend the average daily 
working time throughout the year to from 10 to 11 hours. 

What a difference between this old English statute which 
was not enforced until more than 200 years later, and a law 
placed upon the Revised Statutes of the State of Rhode Is- 
land in the year 1857 which ordained that, thereaiter, 
children from 12 to 15 years old should not work in facto- 
ries any longer than 11 hours a day, nor before 5 in the 
morning, nor after 7-J- in the evening; but lor farm- work 
the working time of the children was not limited. The 
contrast between the old English and the modern American 
law shows, that an increase of daily working hours which 
the English bosses endeavored, in vain, during hundreds of 
years, to force upon their adult mechanics and farm-labor- 
ers, was the customary working time for children in the 
United States in 1857, and is in some states yet to this very 
day. 

Surely, whoever thinks that the condition of the produc- 
ing classes has always been as it is to-day makes a grievous 
mistake. The historical records show that, not only in 
England, but in every European country where serldom 
had been abolished, the producing classes [farmers, laborers, 
and mechanics] during the 14th and 15th centuries, were 



A New Gospel ot Labor. 117 

living in an economical condition to which the care, trouble, 
stagnation of business, and starvation income under which 
the producers of to-day are suffering, were entirely un- 
known. 



howthe: neiw in dust rial, system was 
brought forth. 

But at this very time when the workers of the then most 
civilized nations were in the height of their prosperity, the 
ground-stones were laid for the foundation ol the new eco- 
nomical system that was destined to destroy all that pros- 
perity and lead the civilized nations, gradually, into its 
present economical misery. And the corner-stones of this 
foundation are Greed and Avarice, the twin-vice ol which 
the Bible so truly says that it is the source of all evil ! 
And this is how that deplorable change came about. 

The new channels of trade which had been opened since 
the end ot the Crusades, the discovery of the water-way to 
India and China, and, later on, of the American continent* 

S ther with the general prosperity of the people, had 
brought astounding riches to the merchant class, and made 
them more powerful than lords and kings. While the no- 
bility, lor centuries, had been accustomed to live from hand 
aouth, spending their incomes in riotous living and in 
the support of their many retainers, the merchant-princes 

_ in to hoard their profits in gold and silver coin, and 
thereby inaugurated the beginning oi the modem accumu- 
lation of wealth which, through the easy way of hiding and 
transporting it. through the political power it gave, and the 
luxury it afforded, soon found imitators among all classes 
ot people. The proud old feudal lords who despised the 



118 A New Gospel of Labor. 

spirit of greed growing up in the cities, had vanished be- 
fore the power of the latter ; and their successors were only 
too eager to follow the example set by the merchants, in or- 
der to regain their lost political influence, and to obtain the 
means of rivaling, if not outdoing, the luxury indulged in 
by the wealthy citizens. 

In the cities the employers of industrial labor had, since 
many years, chafed under the restraint put upon them by 
the guild-laws which, together with the favorable condition 
of the agricultural population in their hundreds and thou- 
sands of small farms, caused a paucity of workmen that 
prevented the bosses from turning their shops into lacto- 
nes. For at least 200 years [as shown by the enactment of 
the before mentioned labor- statutes] this struggle of the em- 
ployers to get into a more wealth promising way of produc- 
ing had been carried on without success, when at last, in 
the 16th century, the opportunity came which brought the 
desired change for both, the wealth hungry employers in 
the cities, and the nobility in the country. 

In the latter part of the 15th century, and the beginning 
of the 16th, the Lords were, by Royal decree, compelled to 
dismiss their small armies of followers, whereby, in a few 
years, many thousands of able bodied men lost their homes 
and means of existence, and were thrown upon the labor- 
market. 

At the same time the great woolen mills in Flanders were 
turning out immense quantities of cloth to meet the de- 
mands of the luxurious tashions of the age. The supply of 
wool being limited, it was high in price, and the English 
land-owning nobility, seized as they were with the new 
spirit of greed, set to work at once to turn the vast lands 
which were under their control into sheep-pastures. The 
fact that this land was covered with the homes ol numer- 



A New Gospel oj Labor. 119 

ous small farmers who had the same feudal right to its posses- 
sion as the lords was brutally disregarded, and the farmers 
and their families were driven, by the many thousands, 
from their ancient homes. 

Nor did the noble robbers stop there. The "commons," 
lands which belonged to the villages and towns for the use 
of the people generally, and formed the main support of 
the laboring classes, were likewise seized by the lords lor 
the purpose oi making sheep-pastures out of them, A 
chronicler oi these days states that innumerable houses and 
farmers 1 homes were torn down, and whole towns and vil- 
lages laid waste to make room lor herds of sheep, while the 
former happy and thriving population was turned into the 
highways as vagrants. 

In the middle of the 16th century the reformation gave 
another impetus in the same direction. At that time the 
immense estates held by the Catholic church as feudal own- 
ers were seized by the Crown which gave them to court fa- 
vorites, or sold them to speculators. In either case the 
small farmers residing on these lands, and most of whom 
had strong legal rights connected with their holdings, were 
driven from their homes to make room for sheep or for the 
large farm-renters, a class of iarmers whose business grew 
up rapidly out of the annihilation of the small farmers' 
class. 

The consequences of this wholesale robbery practiced on 
the agricultural population were manifold. It not only 
gave the lord- the lands of the small iarmers [the famous 
yeomanry <»f the country, but it threw the latter as out- 
s', in an economical sense, upon the labor-market. As 
long as they bad their cottages, together with their few 
- of land belonging to each of them, and had the use 
of the Commons, they could live without any wage-labor at 



120 A New Gospel of Labor. 

all; but having lost these means of existence, their only- 
way of earning a living became wage- work in the cities in 
competition with the mechanics and city-laborers. This 
brought them into conflict with the powerful guilds to 
which they could not make a successful opposition and leit 
them, finally, to look for work in the newly established 
factories. 

With these hundreds and thousands of starving vagrants 
who were glutting the labor-market, and eager, at any time, 
to obtain employment, the golden age for the industrial em- 
ployer had come. He was now emancipated from the regu- 
lations of the guilds; he was at liberty to employ as many 
of these vagrants as he pleased ; he did not need to produce 
any more in the customary small way to supply the present 
want but could manufacture by the wholesale, on specula- 
tion, for months and years ahead, and would earn more in 
a year through the many hours of daily toil he could ex- 
tort from his poorly paid vagrants, than he might have ob- 
tained in a life- time through the labor of his former few 
journeymen and apprentices who were protected by the 
guilds against overwork and underpay. 

But another advantage of no less magnitude offered it- 
self now to the noble landlord as well, as to the industrial 
employer. The former obtained with the land he had 
seized the natural resources which it contained, such as 
water-power, fuel, and raw material of various kinds ; all of 
which had formerly belonged to a multitude of people, but 
were now being quickly monopolized in the hands of a few 
who could, thus, easily put a tax upon the consumers, that 
is, upon the whole people. At the same time the employer 
who had the necessary means to expand his business was 
now that the overfilled labor-market allowed him to break 
away from the guild laws enabled to open up a ruinous 



A New Gospel ot Labw 121 

competition against the poorer employer, and did not only 
ruin him, but could prevent other men with small means 
to engage in the manufacturing business. 

A.S long as the land with its natural resources belonged 
to the masses of the people, and the scarcity of workmen 
gave the guilds the power to forbid wholesale manufactur- 
ing, it required but a small amount of means to become an 
employing producer; a piece of land tor a workshop, a 
small amount of raw material, and a few tools being all 
that was needed. With the introduction of factory work on 
a large scale, it required money for large buildings, for 
Large quantities of raw materials, for tools, and for wages 
to pay the increased number of workers. Henceiorth, to 
become an independent producer, an employer of industrial 
labor, a lactory-owner, it required capital which, in those 
days, but few possessed. And thus the old mode of produc- 
tion carried on by the many with small means, for the pur- 
pose of supplving the direct wants of the people, was 
strangled to death ; and in its place rose up the new system 
of production carried on by the few, with the aid of capital, 
for the purpose of accumulating more capital for the em- 
ployers. And this system has kept on growing and spread- 
ing, and is the modern system used now by all the civilized 
nations. 

This great economical revolution w T hich is known as the 
expropriation of the agricultural population of England, 
found its counterpart in the other civilized parts of Europe 
where it took place at about the same time ; and its history 
has been written in the annaks of the human race with letters 
of blood and fire. So suddenly came the change upon the 
producing classes of England, that a writer of that country 
in comparing their condition during the 15th to that of the 
16th century Bays: M It was a fall from the golden age into 



122 A Neiv Gospel of Labor. 

the iron one without any intermediary steps or warning 
even! " 

That this change must have injurious consequences was 
foreseen by the statesmen of those times, and kings and par- 
liaments endeavored, by means of legislative enactments, at 
least to limit the expropriation, and for 150 years, down to 
the time of Cromwell, sporadic efforts were made by the 
Crown and government to carry those laws into effect. But 
all in vain I They could not stem the new current of greed. 
For when the full meaning of this expropriation had be- 
come known to its authors and to the speculators in indus- 
trial work; when they had perceived all the advantages ac- 
cruing to them out of that wholesale robbery, then neither 
the laws of men, nor of humanity could restrain them, and 
the expropriation process was continued to the bitter end, 
until the once Iree and independent producers of England 
became the dependent wage-workers and, in many cases, 
wage-slaves of the industrial and capitalistic barons of the 
new era. 

The revolution brought lorth through this expropriation 
has been of such a pernicious influence upon the whole civ- 
ilized part of mankind, that it is well worth while to learn 
a few of the details of this fight of the old Anglo-Saxons 
against the rule of God Mammon. 



HISTORICAL FACT© ABOUT THE EXPRO- 
PRIATION OF THE SMALL. LAND- 
HOLDERS. 

The kings and parliaments became, at a very early date, 
alarmed at the great social and economical disturbance 



.1 New Gospel ot Labor. L23 

caused by the introduction oi the wholesale sheep-raising bus- 
iness and the expulsion of the farmers . and. consequently, 
Henry VII issued in 1489 an act forbidding the destruction 
of any larm-house to which 20 or more acres oi land be- 
longed. Baco says in his "Life of Henry VII," that "in 
those days complaints about larming land being turned in- 
to pasture for sheep were increasing every day ; Land be- 
longing to the yeomanry were appropriated by the Lords; 
and towns and churches were deserted and going to de- 
struction through the sudden expulsion ot the inhabitants. 

Some years later King Henry VIII re-issued the same 
law in Act 25 in which, as an explanation for renewing the 
old law, he states that many land-leases and great herds of 
cattle, especially sheep, were passing into the hands of a lew 
persons, whereby the ground-rents were considerably in- 
creased, while agriculture was decreasing; churches and 
houses were torn down, and great masses of the people ren- 
dered unable to support themselves and their families. An- 
other act of the English Crown issued in 155.3 limited the 
number of sheep to be kept by one owner to 2000, while 
as the law stated, there were some land-holders who owned 
as many as 24,000 each. 

Seeing that all their royal decrees and legislative acts did 
not stop the expropriation of the farmers, parliament en- 
deavored to secure, at least, to the farm laborer, the sole 
use oi his cottage and of the four acres which were by an- 
cient custom allotted to each of these workmen's domiciles. 
Laws forbidding more than one family to occupy one cot- 
tage, and compelling the owner to dedicate four acres to 
the use of the tenant were passed and for many years en- 
forced. In 1627, under Jacob 1, a land-owner who had 
built and rented out a cottage without the legal four acres 
was tried in the court-, sentenced, and punished for the of- 



124 A New Gospel of Labor. 

fence. In 1638, under Charles I, a royal commission was 
appointed to see that the old land laws, especially the four 
acre cottage law, were carried out, And Cromwell forbid 
the erection of a house in a four mile circle around London 
without its having the four acres of land attached to it. 

But the new system of capitalistic production needed 
homeless workmen who, having nothing to live on but their 
labor, were compelled to sell this labor for whatever wages 
they could get. Hence, the expropriation of the farming 
population went on lustily, so that when Queen Elizabeth, 
who reigned from 1558 to 1603, made a trip through Eng- 
land, she could not help exclaiming : "Pauper ubique 
jacet !" [Everywhere are paupers.] And a few years later, 
in 1601, pauperism was officially acknowledged by the in- 
troduction of the poor-tax. 

In the last decade of the 17th century, the yeomanry, 
England's independent small farmers, the pride and strength 
of Cromwell's army, praised by McCauley as being far su- 
perior to the drunken knights and their hirelings, counted 
more numbers yet than the land-renters. Only sixty years 
later, in 1750, the yeomanry did not exist any more ; and 
not quite 50 years later still, shortly before the year 1800, 
there was not an acre of the "commons" belonging to the 
farming population left ; the noble lords had confiscated 
the whole of it ior their private use. 

A comparison of the proportion of pasture and farm land 
during the different centuries show T s best the progress made 
by the expropriation process. In the 14th and 15th cen- 
turies there was 1 acre of pasture to 2, 3, or 4 of farmland ; 
in the 16th century 3 acres of pasture to 2 of farmland ; 
later on 2 of pasture to 1 of farmland ; and still later 3 
acres of pasture to 1 of farmland; so that Thomas Morus 
could very truly say in his " Utopia, " that England was a 



A New Gospel of Labor 125 

very curious country, whore the sheep were eating up the 
population. 

The expropriation continued far into the present century- 
although, at least in England proper, not carried on any 
moreby force and violence, hut by the law; the English 
House of Lord- voting and donating, during the years 1801 
t<> 1831 t<> the lords ot England, that is to themselves, no 
less than 3,511,770 acres, the last rest of the commons be- 
longing to the town and village people But Scotland fin- 
- 1 up the business of wholesale land-robbery, even in this 
century in the old style, with brutal force, by means ot fire 
and sword, under the genteel name of "Clearing the 
Estates " 

The "benevolent" so called by her class] Duchess of 
Sutherland "cleared" in this manner, from 1814 to 1820 a 
of land containing 1241 square miles, or 794,000 acres 
which, since time immemorial, had belonged to her class 
and in doing so, she drove 15,000 men, women, and child- 
ren, her own clan's people, to the sea shore. The land was 
then divided into 29 sheep pastures, each in charge of one 
man who was imported from the English sheep farms; and 
thus the raising of sheep was commenced and carried on so, 
that in five years the Duchess had on the "cleared" lands 
131,000 sheep instead oi her expelled 15,000 clan's people 
the real owners of the land. 

But to do full justice t<> the Duchess it must he stated 

that she provided for her country folk-. She had them 

driven l»y the military forces who executed the • elearing"' 

»ast, likewise owned by the Duchess, where they had 

iy 2| shillings per a< ar, for the privilege of using 

acres ["J acres per family of weather-beaten sea shore 

ishing in the summer, and to die on it with hunger and 

cold in the winter. And even there they did not find rest ; 



126 A Kew Gospel of Labor. 

for, after a few years, a London fishing company offered 
Lady Sutherland more than the 2J shillings per acre tor 
the 6000 acres ; the offer was accepted, and the survivors of 
the original 15,000 exiles again expropriated, to find, prob- 
ably, their final homes in paupers' graves. 

Of this "estate clearing" process in England David Bu- 
chanan says I in his "Observations on Adam Smith's 
Wealth <<f Nations," Edinburgh, 1814] that the customary 
conditions were forcibly revolutionized, and the old, heredi- 
tary renters driven away to make room for some, more rent 
paying improver, under whose new system of farming the 
small farmers inhabiting the land were expelled and had to 
take refuge to the factory-towns in order to obtain work and 
the means of subsistence. 

George Ensor, another writer, in treating of the same 
time and proceedings says [in "An Inquiry Concerning the 
Population of Nations," London, 1818] that "the Scottish 
nobles have expropriated families, as they would extermi- 
nate weeds ; they have destroyed whole villages and their 
inhabitants in the same manner as the natives of India 
would destroy the wild beasts and their lairs. Human be- 
ings are traded off for a sheep -pelt, a leg of mutton, or even 
less. * * When the Mongolians had conquered the 
northern provinces of China, it was proposed among the 
generals of the victorious army to kill all the inhabitants 
and turn their lands into pasture. This proposition which 
was not adopted by the Mongolians has been carried out by 
many of the Highland lords against their own countrymen." 

Naturally, the question arises whether, in view of the ex- 
treme lawlessness and cruelties of these proceedings on the 
part of the nobility, the expelled people quietly submitted 
to them through these hundreds of years ; and the answer 
leads to the most sickening part of this economical revolution. 



A New Gospel of Labor. 127 

LAWS AGAINST T H El E X P EI L L EI D L A N D - 
HOLDERS. 

It is to be remembered that the expropriation began to 
set in with full force all ol a sudden ; that the new factories 
were not ready, immediately, to employ the many who had 

been driven from their homes: that the majority ol the out- 
casts, having been brought up to the independent farmers' 
life, could not readily adapt themselves to the wage-work in 
the city, and wandered about in the country endeavoring to 
obtain agricultural employment. The consequence was 
that many thousands ot the expelled farmers became va- 
grants, beggars, and thieves, some because there was not 
work enough lor all of them, and others because, with the 
stubborn sturdinessof the Anglo-Saxon freeman, they would 
become anything rather than the inmates of the new facto- 
ries with their prison discipline, and confined in unhealthy 
crowded room>. 

But with the same stubborness still strengthened by their 
greed lor wealth the factory-owners left nothing undone 
that legislation could do to turn the vagrants into factory- 
workers, into wage-slaves ready to be employed when need- 
ed, and unable to object to their dismissal when not needed; 
into proletarians who, through their extreme poverty, were 
compelled to work the largest possible number of hours per 
day lor such low wage- as would just support them, but not 
allow them to accumulate any means and regain their old 
condition of independence. 

This demand ot the employers was readily granted by 
the nation's rulers. While, during the first period of the 
expropriation, kings and parliaments had occasionally pass- 
ed a statute or issued an '-act" against the expulsion of the 
farming population which laws were seldom carried out to 
any large extent, the whole legislative attention was soon 



128 A New Gospel of Labor. 

diverted from the noble land-robbers to the robbed, and 
laws against the latter were enacted and carried out which 
would have moved the heart of a Nero to pity. The high 
horn land robbers were not molested by any courts of jus- 
tice for the perpetration or their crimes; they were leit in 
peaceful possession and enjoyment of the stolen land ; but 
the people who had been robbed of their homes and means 
of subsistence, and driven, against their will, into vagrancy 
and pauperism, were treated by parliament as voluntary 
criminals who could resume their old mode of living, if 
they only wanted to, and for not doing so, [which was an 
impossibility], were punished as traitors to the land and en- 
emies of the common weal. 

Under Henry VIII, in 1530, it was enacted that aged and 
infirm beggars receive a beggar's license; able-bodied men- 
dicants were to be tied to a cart and whipped until the 
blood would stream over their bodies. Then they should 
take oath that they would return to where they had lived 
the last 3 years and put themselves to work again, [proba- 
bly to admire the idyllic beauty of their lordships' sheep- 
herds quietly grazing on the sites of the mendicants' burnt 
down homes]. 

This law was re-enacted under the same king, but with 
more severe regulations ; one of which was to the effect that 
an offender, arrested the second time, should be whipped 
and have half of his ear cut off, while at the third offense 
he was to suffer capital punishment. That these laws were 
rigidly carried out is well known. Hollingshed in his "De- 
scription of England," Vol. I, states that, under King Henry 
VIII, 72,000 thieves and mendicants, young and old, were 
hung by the neck until dead. 

In 1547, under Edwards VI, it was ordained that any 
idle man who refused to accept employment when it was 



V< w Gospel of Labor. 129 

red to him should become, for 2 years, the slave of the 
son who informed on him. The owner should feed such 
a slave on bread and water and such offall of meat, as he 
might choose to give him. The slave could be chained and 
whipped in order to compel him to work; and if^he ran 
away and was caught, he was sold into slavery for life and 
branded with a red-hot iron on cheek or forehead with the 
■■ ■■ S." It he ran away the second time, he was put to 
death. Under the same law anybody could take any va- 
grant's children away from him and put them to work ; and 
ii they ran away, they became the master's slaves, the girls 
until _><• years, the boys until 24 years of age. The owners 
of these slaves could put iron rings around their legs, arms, 
or ;. 3, so as to recognize the runaways. 

Under Queen Elizabeth a law was passed in 1572 that 
sugars without a license and over 14 years old, if they 
could not find anybody who would employ them for 2 years, 
should he whipped hard and branded on the lett ear. If 
caught again begging and unable to find employment for 2 
years they were hung, if over 18 years old. It caught the 
third tiioe. they were hung without regard to age. 

These are only ;i few samples oi the many laws enacted 

against those unfortunates whose miserable fate Thomas 

is forcibly describes in hi- " Utopia " as follows: "And 

happened every day that one greedy and unsatiable 

land-glutton grabbed and fenced thousands of acres and 

compelled their owners, through force or running, or all 

chicanery, to sell what little household goods they 

had and move! Poor, simple, pitiable souls! Men. women. 

irphans, widows, crying mothers with 

nursing babes, they wandered along looking in vain for 

another place where to get work and a home, until the last 

farthing, the}' had, was g Then, what else could they 



130 A New Gospel of Labor. 

do but beg or steal for which, if caught, they were locked 
up, whipped, branded and finally hung, because through the 
crimes of their lords they had become vagrants and could 
not find other work and homes, however hard they tried." 

Another early writer, named Strype, says in 1725, [in his 
u Annals of the Reformation and Establishment o! Religion, 
and other Various Occurrences in the Church of England 
during Queen Elizabeth's happy reign."]: " During her 
reign numbers of vagrants were hung, at once, in tiers. 
There was not a year during which there were not hung 
irom 300 to 400 persons. In Somersetshire alone, in one 
year, 40 persons were hung, 35 branded, 37 whipped, and 
183 released. These were not one fifth of all the persons 
guilty of the same crime, but, through the carelessness of 
the judges and the sympathy of the people, the others es- 
caped the punishment of the law. In other countries it was 
just as bad, and in many much worse. 

On the European Continent similar laws were passed at 
the same period of time, and the expropriated peasants 
treated in the same manner as in England. Even as late 
as 1777 in France, under Louis XVI, an "Ordonnance" 
was issued according to which every able bodied person from 
16 to 60 years old, if found without means of subsistence 
and out of employment, was sent to the galleys and became 
a galley-slave lor life. 



LAWS AGAINST LA BO R - U N I O N S AND 

WORKINQMEN. 

While thus the unemployed victims of the great national 
land-steal were, by the law of the land, whipped, branded, 
and tortured into becoming fit candidates for factory-work 



A New Gospel of Labor. 131 

and wage-slavery, the employers and expropriators together 
did aot forgot, through their friends in parliament, to obtain 
such legislation as to keep the employed workers in shops 
and fields from ever regaining their former power and in- 
dependence. They remembered, above all things that, dur- 
ing several hundred years, the guilds which included the 
masters and their employes had controlled the national pro- 
duction by limiting the number of men to be employed and 
ther regulations which made the speculative wholesale 
manufacturing impossible, and rendered the journeymen 
working in the shops a well-to do and independent class that 
were nearly on the same social scale with their employers. 
It had taken hundreds of years to break the power of the 
guilds: and to prevent a new and more dangerous associa- 
tion formed by workingmen alone to take their place, the 
- died anti-coalition laws were enacted which made such 
3E dations a crime and were, most severely, enforced until 
almost the present time. The most cruel of these legalized 
regulations were repealed in 1825, while the last traces of 
them were wiped out of the English law books only a very 
few years ago. 

How much interested the whole class of employers in 
Europe was in these laws, is to be learned from the fact that. 
during the French revolution, shortly after the workingmen 
had waded in blood to obtain among other privileges the 
right to associate with each other, they were deprived of it 
again as soon as the middle class, the trader- and employ- 
ed gained the political power. And in June 1791 it was 
declared, by law, thai all coalitions between workmen were 
a crime against the liberty and rights of men. and that 
forming them should be punished accordingly. 

Together with the anti-coalition law- de Tee after decree 
— 1 by ti.»' crown and parliaments of England to fix 



132 A Neiv Gospel of Labor. 

the wages of the working-men, and exemplary punishment 
awaited the wage-worker who took higher pay than the law 
allowed him, while the employer who paid it came off with 
a nominal fine. All this legislation against the labor-ele- 
ment remained in full force and virtue, until it had fulfilled 
its purpose of reducing the condition of the English work- 
men to the lowest possible grade and turning them into 
helpless proletarians. This effort was so successful that in 
179(3, after a series of labor hostile legal enactments extend- 
ing through 300 years, a motion was made in parliament 
by a member named Whitebread to establish a minimum: 
wage-rate that should be paid to agricultural laborers. The 
motion created an unheard ot sensation, and was, most bit- 
terly, opposed by the Premier, Mr. Pitt, although he admit- 
ted that the situation of the poor laborers in the country 
was indeed a cruel one. 



HOW M AOH IN EI-WORK A FFECT EI D T H EI 
ENGLISH WORKMEIN. 

The wage regulations in England were finally abolished 
in the year 1813. And well could the opponents oi the 
workmen afford to do so; for they had found an ally in the 
invention of industrial machinery and steam-power that 
made wage regulation laws entirely superfluous. These 
great modern inventions, intended as they were, theoretical- 
ly, to save labor to the workmen, had the practical result oi 
saving workmen to 'the employers ! They threw more un- 
employed men upon the labor-market; they reduced, there- 
by, the wages of the employed ones; they decreased the in- 
come ot the working classes still more by letting children 
and women run the machinery and thus perform the labor 



,4 New Gospd of Labor. 133 

formerly done by adult workingmen. And lust, and by no 
means least, the introduction of expensive machinery gave 
tln i occasion for the deadly night work by which the owners 
secured themselves against losing the interest on their invest- 
ed capital, through any idleness of the plant, during day 
or night. 

As it is customary with those who are hostile to the work- 
ing classes to deny that machinery has reduced the number 
of workers employed, a few English statistics of an earlier 
date than the ones cited on the same subject in a previous 
chapter from American sources may be interesting. The 
often quoted needle-machines produced with the assistance 
of only one girl three times as much as ten men did before 
in the same number of hours. In 1851 England's agricul- 
tural business employed 2,011,447 workers and in 1861 
only 1,924,110. The worsted goods manufacture employed 
in 1851 altogether 102,714 persons, in 1861 only 79,242. 
The silk factory workers were reduced during those ten 
years from 111,940 to 101,678; the hat-makers from 15,957 
to 13,814; the straw hat and bonnet-makers from 20,393 to 
18,175 workers, and so on in many other branches of in- 
dustrial work. The census reports for England and Wales 
for 1862 state that "the increase of laborers had, since the 
year 1851, taken place principally in those branches of 
work where machinery had not yet been successfully em- 
ployed." 

^responding with this decrease of the workmen em- 
ployed was the enormous increase of machinery and steam- 
power during the same ten years. In the cotton, woolen, 
flax, and silk goods industries alone the steam-power had 
i more than quadrupled, rising from 88,417 to 375,311 
horse-power, an increase of power and machine-work equal 
to that of 3| millions of workingmeii. These few facte are 



134 A New Gospel of Labor. 

sufficient to show the effect that machine-work exercised in 
reducing the English workingmen's chances of employ- 
ment, and they exhibit such a striking similarity with the 
figures and facts on the same subject furnished by the cen- 
sus statistics of the United States for the years 1870 and '80 
[and published in previous chapters of this book] as to 
show that the business of this comparatively new country 
is being run in the same old ruts and grooves, as in Europe 
with its inherited poverty and pauperism of hundreds of 
years standing. 



the: effect of the: new system upon 
the english workers. 

To what depths of poverty, degradation and misery this 
new capitalistic system ol production has brought the once 
free and independent English artificers and farm-workers of 
300 years ago, can be learnt from a lew extracts from the 
reports of some of the commissions appointed by the Crown 
to examine into the condition ol the working people, and 
from other official sources. 

In June 1860 Mr. Broughton, a county magistrate, re- 
ported before a meeting held in the town hall of Notting- 
ham that: "Among that part of their population occupied 
in the manufacture of laces, there was a degree ol misery 
and want unknown to the rest of the civilized world. At 
2, 3 S and 4 o'clock in the morning children of 9 years old 
and upwards must leave their dirty beds, and are compelled 
to work for perhaps a trifle more than the bare means of 
existence until 10, 11, and 12 o'clock at night. Their limbs 
shrink; their whole forms collapse; their faces are dull; and 



A New Gospel of Labor. 135 

they 9eem, in body and soul, to be possessed of a torpor, 
the very aspect of which is horrid.*' 

The potters ot Staffordshire have, repeatedly, been ob- 
jects of governmental investigations. One of the commis- 
sioners, Mr. Longe, says, [in his " Keport of Children's Em- 
ployment Commission, June 1863,"] that "children of 7 
years old and more worked from 14 to 1(3 hours per day lor 
3 sh. '5 d. [87 cents] per week, often once or twice a week 
all night through without any extra pay/' Dr. Bouthroyd, 
a witness before the commission, states [in "Public Health 
Import ol Dr. Greenhow I860"]: ''Every successive genera- 
tion of these potters is more dwarfish and weaker than the 
preceding one.'' Another Doctor says: "During my 25 
years' practice among the potters I have found them to de- 
generate, losing in weight and in height. ' Dr. Atledge 
report.-: "As a class, the potters, men, women, and child- 
ren are a degenerated population, physically, mentally, and 
morally. Small of figure, dwarfish, and often with deform- 
ed chests, they age prematurely, and do not live long. 
Dy-pepsia, liver, and kidney troubles, rheumatism, and 
principally pneumonia, bronchitis, and asthma kill them 
off fast. Two-thirds ot them suffer from scrofula of the 
-land- and other parts of the body. That this condition is 
not even worse is owing to the fresh supply of workers they 
constantly get from the adjoining agricultural districts who 
infuse new blood in the potters' class, though only soon to 
degenerate themselves." The same facts came to light in 
th. investigation of the condition of the potters in other 
parts of England, and likewise in Scotland. 

About the manufacture of matches Commissioner White 

reported in 1863 that "of the 330 workers in the busi- 

a whom he examined 270 were under 18 years of age, 

mder 10 years ; 10 under 8 years, and 5 only 6 years 



136 A New Gospel of Labor. 

old. The work was so notoriously unhealthy that only the 
poorest people worked at it, such as widows with their child- 
ren. The hours of work were 12 one day and 14 to 15 the 
next day; night work was customary, meal times irregular, 
and the meals had to be taken in the work-rooms which, 
rilled as they were with the pestilential phosphor-exhala- 
tion, resembled a hell more than a place for human beings 
to dwell in." 

In the manufacture of wall paper the busiest months are 
from October to April. During this time the work is car- 
ried on from 6 in the morning till 10 at night and later. 
Children were kept to work until they could not keep their 
eyes open, while others cried every night with pain in their 
feet which became sore from the long day's work. One of 
the owners of a Manchester factory stated, that they em- 
ployed 292 workers of whom 140 were adults, and 152 
children and youths under 16 years old. They worked 
part of the year 1863 as much as 84 hours a week. There 
was no time for meals allowed between 6 in the morning 
and 4J in the evening. 

The bakers throughout England were compelled to work 
from 12 at night till 8 in the morning at the baking oven 
with 3 or 4 spells for rest. After 8 o'clock they worked till 
4, 5, or 6 in the evening, carrying out bread, or baking 
biscuit, getting after that 6, 5, or only 4 hours lor sleep. 

Railroad employes fared no better than the bakers. 
When, in 1866, a conductor and a locomotive engineer were 
on trial for having caused an accident, the evidence pro- 
duced showed that their daily working time was from 14 
to 18 and even 20 hours. And on extraordinary occasions, 
when travel was very brisk, the train -employes had been on 
duty without interruption from 40 to 50 hours, until their 
senses became dulled ; a torpor seized them ; they could not 



A New Gospel of Labor. 137 

sec: their brains ceased to think; and accidents causing 
the loss oi human Lives were the natural consequence. 

How girls and women were worked to death, is graphic- 
ally pictured by Dr. Richardson, the chief physician of a 
London hospital [in "Death from simple overwork," pub- 
lished in the "Social Science Review," July 1863 ; "Seam- 
stresses of all kinds, milliners, dressmakers, and common 
sowing girls surfer from a three-fold misery: Overwork, 
want of air, and want ol nourishment or the inability to 
digest it. About 26 capitalists control the work in these 
branches in London ; they compel through a ruinous com- 
petition any dressmaker who establishes herself in the bus- 
iness to work day and night, in order to exist, and to make 
her hired girls work just as long hours. When she finally 
gives up the struggle and goes to work for one of the large 
establishments, she must work in busy times from 15 to 18 
hours a day in a shop which is overfilled, and where the 
air is so mephitic, as to prevent the digestion of the miser- 
able lood which these female slaves must live on. Or 
when work is slack, she is idle, and before she gets work 
again starves nearly to death in the little chamber which 
forms her home, unless consumption attacks her w T hich gen- 
erally cuts short the miserable life of the sewing woman. 

The same fate awaited in these occupations the girls 
working in the fashionable shops, as in the common ones. 
In the last part of June 1863 London was thrown into a 
temporary excitement over the fact that in an highly respect- 
able ''Court" millinery shop, where the highest aristocracy 
were getting their court dresses made for the reception-ball 
of the just married Princess of Wales, a millinery girl by 
the name of Mary Ann Walker, had suddenly died of over- 
work, after having worked continually tor 26J hours to- 
gether with 60 other girls. They worked in two rooms 



138 A New Gospel of Labor. 

which did not contain one-third of the necessary cubic feet of 
air. The doctor who treated the girl before she expired, 
testified before the coroner's jury that she died of working 
long hours in an overcrowded workroom, and of sleeping 
in a small, ill ventilated bed-room. The "Morning Star," 
the organ of Cobden and Bright, said in commenting on 
the occurrence: "Our white slaves are worked into their 
graves and perish and die without aid and sympathy." 

If the subject of child labor be studied, it will be seen 
that the extortion of work from them was little better than 
murder of the innocents, as the following example illus- 
trates. In the business of straw-plaiting and straw-hat-man- 
ufacturing there were in 1861 employed 40,043 workers; of 
these 3815 were males of all ages, the other 37,200 were all 
females, 15,000 of whom were under 20 years old and 7,000 
of these children, the latter worked in so-called "schools" in 
the cottages of poor women who teach and keep them to 
work a certain number of hours when they return home 
and are put to work by their starving mothers until 10, 1 1, 
and 12 o'clock at night. The children begin to visit these 
work-schools when they are 4 years old, some even before 
that age. The straw cuts the fingers and the mouth, be- 
cause it must be kept moist. The workrooms are over-filled ; 
Commissioner White, who examined them states that, gen- 
erally, the cubic contents for each child-worker measured 
less than a dry-goods box 3 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 1J 
feet high. 

The "Children's Employment Commission" tells in anoth- 
er part of its reports: "The effect upon one who enters the 
low workshops where 30 to 40 sewing girls are operating 
their machines is intolerable. The heat which principally 
arises from the gas-stoves that heat the flat-irons is horrible, 
Even when in such establishments the working time is cut 



A New Gospel of Labor. 139 

down from 8 in the morning to 6 at night there is not a day 

when throe or four of the operators do not laint away and 
lose consciousness for a longer or shorter period of time. 

The miners were completely in the power of the mine- 
owners and renters. They had to live in the most squalid 
manner in the unhealthy, overcrowded houses of the com- 
pany which owned the respective mine, were compelled to 
buy in the owner's store, had to pay for their water supply 
whether it was good or bad, and were altogether, as a prom- 
inent writer of that time says, to all intents and purposes 
>erfs. 

The agricultural laborers were worse off yet. Completely 
without means, because their weekly pay was just sufficient 
to supply them with the most needed necessaries of lite, 
they lived on food tar inferior to that given to penitentiary 
prisoners, and in houses so small and unhealthy as to be 
ding places ot diseases and of the grossest immorality. 
All this was doubly true where the gang-system was and is 
yet in vogue: where a gang-master travels with a lot of 
children and youths of both sexes from farm to farm and 
furnishes the renters with their needed labor. That these 
children are worn out bodily, and ruined morally, needs no 
argument. A country police officer who had served for 
many years as a detective in the worst quarters of London 
stated, as witness before the "Children's Employment Com- 
mission," [6th Report. London 1867]: "The immorality of 
the girls of some of the villages, their complete want of 
shame often at an early age, is worse than what I have ever 
seen in the worst parts of London. They live like hogs: 
big boys and girls, mothers and fathers, all sleeping togeth- 
er in the same room." 

From the excessiv.- use of night-work and long hours 
per day it might be concluded that it was caused by the 



140 A New Gospel of Labor. 

rush of business, by great prosperity. But such was not 
the case ; from the moment that steam-power and machine 
work was resorted to, there had been a constant series of 
hard and dull times, interspersed with a steadily decreasing 
number of prosperous years, as can be seen from a synopsis 
of the state of the great English cotton-goods industry from 
1770 to 1862: 

From 1770 to 1815, dull times for 5 years; the balance 
prosperous years, because at that time the English manu- 
factories had a monopoly of the machinery and controlled 
the markets of the world. 

From 1815 to 1821, business dull. 

From 1822 to 1821, prosperous times; general extension 
of business. 

In 1825, crisis. 

In 1826, great misery and strikes among the working- 
people. 

In 1827, signs of approaching prosperity. 

From 1828 to 1829, very busy times; great extension of 
business. 

In 1830, market overfilled; great misery among the 
workers. 

From 1831 to 1833, continued dullness. 

In 1834 great increase of factories and machinery; very 
busy times ; want of workers. 

In 1835, machine-work very prosperous, while hand- 
weavers starve to death. 

In 1836, great prosperity. 

From 1837 to 1838, crisis ; dull times. 

In 1839, business revival. 

In 1840, great depression ; misery and riots among the 
idle workers. 

From 1841 to 1842, terrible suffering among factory- 
workers. 



A New Gospel of Labor. 141 

In 1843, great misery. 

Jn 1844, business revival. 

In 184"), general prosperity. 

In L846, prosperity and signs of an approaching crisis. 

In 1847, crisis; wages lowered 10 pei cent 

In 1848, continued dull times. 

In 1849, business revives. 

In 1S50, prosperity. 

In 1851, depression, falling prices; low wages, strikes. 

In 1852, turn to the better; strikes continue. 

In 1853, busy times changing off with labor troubles. 

In 1854, prosperity; markets commence to get overfilled. 

In 1855, reports of bankruptcies from everywhere. 

In 1856, great prosperity. 

In 1857, cris 

In 1858, business revives. 

In 1859, great prosperity; new factories springing up in 
great numbers. 

In 1860, zenith of English cotton-goods industry; facto- 
ries increasing at enormous rates; all the markets filled 
with English goods. 

In 1861, reaction setting in. 

From 1862 to 1863 complete collapse of the business* 

This picture of the working classes of England in or 
about the year 1860 is far from being complete in all its 
horrid truth. But enough has been shown to illustrate 
how the new system of production has succeeded in turning 
the best part of a nation of proud, strong, able-bodied free- 



*These data bear out in the strongest possible manner the statements 
made in Part I, Chapter V, of this book about the reckless production 
in the United States and consequent changing of hard times with pros- 
perity. 



142 A New Gospel of Labor. 

men, the equals, if not superiors of any nation in Europe or 
elsewhere, into a class of proletarians as abject and misera- 
ble as any to be found in Christendom, so that ex-Premier 
Gladstone, England's great statesman, although an aristo- 
crat and far from being a champion ol labor, could not help 
crying out in parliament on April 7th, 1864: "Think of 
those who are on the borders of pauperism! Truly, life is 
in nine case out ol ten but a struggle lor existence!" 

Professor Fawcett, an authority on social economy, wrote 
at about the same time: "The rich grow rapidly richer, 
while there is no increase of the comiort of the laboring 
classes to be seen. The workmen become almost the slaves 
of the grocers and shop-keepers whose debtors they are!' 7 
Another prominent author writing lor "Reynold's newspa- 
per" says on Jan. 20th, 1867: "Starvation ol the London 
poor! At the moment that English workingmen with 
wives and children die of hunger and cold, millions of 
pounds of English money, the product of English labor, 
are invested in Russian, Spanish, Italian, and other foreign 
loans!" 

John Bright, the great representative of English trade 
and commerce, stated in 1860 that 150 landlords owned 
one-half of all English soil, and 12 landlords owned one- 
half ol Scotland; and in 1867 he told parliament that the 
entire number of land-owners in Great Brittain. Scotland, 
and Ireland, amounted, at that time, to 14,769 out of a pop- 
ulation of 29,000,000; both of which statements have nev- 
er been contradicted and stand forth as acknowledged 
truth. 

Dudley Baxter, a capitalistic writer, sums up the general 
condition of the people by giving, from the official statis- 
tics, the following information regarding the income of the 
different classes in the year 1870: The entire population 



A New Gospel of Labor. 14:> 

counted 30,000,000 souls. Of these there were 17,000,000 
wage-workers and their family members, whose total income 
|660,000,000, or an average per head of 10J cents a 
day. The indirect producers, such as servants, clerks, 
teachers, ami similarly, salaried employes [the aristocracy 
of the wage-workers] counted, including their family mem- 
bers, 6,000,000 ot souls, whose total income was $840,000,- 
000 per year, or 38 cents a day for each man, woman, or 
child of this class. The remaining 7,000,000 who included 
the paupers, half-paupers, and small and big capitalists, mer- 
chants, and factory-owners are reported to have had an in- 
come of $2,500,000,000. That this is an under-estimate is 
: from the constant complaints of the government col- 
lectors of internal revenue, who state that the large commer- 
cial and industrial firms defraud the government system- 
atically by making lower income statements in order to es- 
cape the income tax. 

The produce of the country lor that year was $4,000,- 
000.000, or in retail prices at least $8,000,000,000. This 
shows that the 23,000,000 working people, forming four 
fifths of the entire population, had only one-third of the 
entire national income and could, with this small income, 
consume but one-fifth of the national produce. 

This was, in the year 1870, the condition to which the 
once thriving and well-to-do English yeomanry and indus- 
trial class, the pride and flower of the nation, had been re- 
duced alter a heroic struggle of 400 years against the intro- 
duction of the system which has brought about the change. 
At the same time the successors of the great lords who had 
imitted tic crime of thus impoverishing the people; 
and the new commercial and industrial lords who profited 
by it, were rolling in luxury and enjoying a steadily in- 
creasing wealth which was. under the new industrial sys- 



144 A New Gospel of Labor. 

tern, ground out of the flesh, bones, and blood of the Eng- 
lish workingmen, working women, working children, and 
working babes, through overwork and underpayl 

But it is better to let an English authority sum up the 
condition of his countrymen in these modern times of 
steam-power, child-labor, and high christian civilization. 
It is none less than England's greatest living statesman, 
Wm. Gladstone, who declared one day in the house of 
commons: 

"It is one of the most melancholy features in the social 
state of the country that, while there is an increase in the 
privations and the distress suffered by the laboring class 
and operatives, and a decrease in the consuming power of 
the people, there is at the same time a constant accumula- 
tion of wealth in the upper classes and a constant increase 
of capital!" 



how the: Rroduoers of the: united 
states lost their golden age. 

There is so much similarity between the statistical figures 
showing the economical condition of the population of 
England in 1870 and that of the people of the United 
States in 1880, that practically they may be said to be 
alike. In both countries the overwhelming majority had 
an average income which was insufficient to secure to the 
individuals the necessaries of life, while the small moneyed 
class owned the greater part of the national wealth and had 
an enormous income. In both countries machine-work and 
child labor steadily reduced the chances of employment for 



A New Gospel of Labor 14o 

the adult workers aud turned multitudes of the unemploy- 
ed into vagrants, paupers, and thieves. In both countries 
the people are too poor to consume their yearly national 
produce. And in both countries the wealth of the few and 
the poverty of the many kept on increasing in an alarming 
manner. 

The I nited States may not have the dwarfed English 
and Scotch potters yet. or the hereditary proletarians who 
work in the English cotton mills and agricultural gangs; 
but in every large American city the intamous "sweating" 
- stem is in full operation which allows the vampire 
"sweater" bosses to flourish and fatten by sucking, in full 
d raits, the life-blood oi their workers, especially of the 
working children, girls, and women. And the horrors of 
the mines in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and other states with 
their imported and domestic cheap and penitentiary labor 
surpasses any misery known in the English mines. 

American child-labor is as ruinous to the health of the 
youthful worker as that of any other country. The report 
of Mr. Broughton, a county magistrate, made in 1860 in 
the town of Nottingham in England wherein he says of the 
children who manufactured laces, that "their limbs shrink, 
their whole forms collapse, their faces become dull, and a tor- 
por seems to possess their bodies and souls," is re-echoed in 
1886, in the report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of 
Pennsylvania to the governor in the following language: 
"The close confinement and long hours to which, by the 
nature of the employment, the factory children of Penn- 
sylvania are subjected, are ruinous to their constitution, 
stunt their growth, and, with female children in particular, 
superinduce premature old age. The child in confinement 
is but a copy in miniature of the adult woman who, with 
dried up, sallow skin and unkempt hair, stands wearily 
watching her loom." 



146' A JS : ew Gospel of Labor. 

The prison discipline in the English factories of 300 
years ago, which the expelled farm -laborers shunned so 
much as to rather prefer begging or stealing with a pros- 
pective punishment of being whipped and hanged, could 
hardly have been worse, than the regulations practiced in 
the tobacco factories of South and North Carolina where 
youths aud children are whipped, like the slaves of old, to 
drive them at their work, or than the Pennsylvania facto- 
ries of which Joel B. McCarnaut, chief oi the labor bureau 
of Pennsylvania reports in 1886: 

"The rules in some factories are as arbitrary as those 
which properly govern convicts in a penitentiary. In one 
factory, where nearly all the operatives were females, I 
found rules, substantially as follows, in force: "An em 
ploye not within the factory when the whistle blows in the 
morning is to be docked six cents [equivalent to one full 
hour's wages]. If inside the factory at that time, but not 
at work, 3 cents [half an hour's wages]. Talking, whisper- 
ing, or passing notes, 10 cents [If hour's wages]. Going to 
water-closet without permission from the foreman, 10 cents 
[If hour's wages]. Being in the water closet beyond a lim- 
ited time, 10 cents [If hour's wages]. Employes shall pay 
for all the tools used by them, and for all breakage, and 
shall take home and wash at their own expense the window 
curtain covers of the factory." The same state official says: 
"In a cotton factory visited by me it was the rule to "dock" 
[charge] the girl or woman- weaver for a whole piece of cot- 
ton containing 120 yards, if any fraction of a piece, even 
less than one foot was damaged." 

If, besides these samples of the American wage-workers' 
condition, the starvation misery be mentioned, of the hun- 
dreds of thousands ot unemployed workingmen who 
travel through the country under the name of tramps, com- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 147 

monwealers, or industrial armies, but who are, in fact, only 
a modern type of the expropriated English yeomen and 
farm-laborers that traveled as vagrants through England 
300 years ago, then enough has been said to show that the 
working people oi the United States, if they are as yet not 
as poor, degraded, and miserable as those ot England, sure- 
ly make fast strides to reach that condition in a very 
short time. 

In one particular, however, the two people entirely differ 
namely in the manner in which they have accepted the 
pernicious system of production which has led them into 
the abyss of poverty. For while the English producers 
have not permitted its introduction until, alter centuries of 
a life and death struggle against it, submission has been 
bred into tiiem, the whole people of the United States have 
voluntarily adopted it. When among them the inconsider- 
ate chase after wealth, the proverbial greed for the almighty 
dollar, had fully established itself as the national vice, then 
the iniquitous but wealth promising European system of 
production was fostered by all the classes of the people 
of the United State with every possible means, legal and 
other, with the aid of omitted as w T ell as of favorable leg- 
islation, accelerating its full development with all its conse- 
quent evils in so short a time, and in a manner so regard- 
Less of the public weal, as has never been permitted in any 
other country. 

The most prominent part in the committing of this grave 
national error has been played by the state and national 
slators. While no law has been enacted to impede the 
too rapid concentration of the capital invested in industrial 
undertakings, or to restrict, within reasonable bounds, the 
accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, while no 
measures have been devised by which to prevent the finan- 



148 A New Gospel of Labor. 

cial and industrial crises, or to secure to the working classes 
steady employment and such just remuneration for their 
labor as to keep the consumptive power of the people up 
to its productive capacity; while on all these vitally im- 
portant matters there is not a law on the statute books of a 
single state or of the United States, there has been an 
abundance of legislation passed to operate in the opposite 
direction. 

Obsolete immigration laws, adapted to the wants of the 
country when it was hardly more than an uninhabited wil- 
derness, have not only been kept in force long alter they 
had become injurious, but a government bonus has been 
granted for the attraction of the poorest class of European 
immigrants by giving them, on their arrival, a right to 
file on and occupy each a large tract of the public domain, 
years beiore they can become citizens. The public land 
laws passed for this purpose 35 years ago have of late filled 
the country with a class of settlers for which there is no 
need, and immense tracts of government lands have thus 
been squandered. 

The same land laws, through their looseness, have invit- 
ed fraudulent and speculative settlers to steal enormous 
quantities of the public land from the people, and caused the 
creation of monopolistic land syndicates and corporations. 

To complete the waste of public lands the government 
has given away to railroad speculators tracts of land which, 
taken together, are larger than the mightiest European em- 
pires, in strict imitation of the English House of Lords 
when it took away the "Commons" that belonged to the 
whole people from the latter, and gave them to the aristo- 
cratic land-holders. 

Patent laws are in full force which do not protect the 
poor inventor, but foster in the strongest manner, the crea- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 149 

tion of wealthy and powerful monopolies; while the laws 
enacted to suppress trust combinations are SO weak and 
flimsy, as to render their enforcement difficult and improb- 
able. The formation ot corporations tor the purpose of 
concentrating the transportation, mining, industrial, and al- 
most any other business in the hands of a tew capitalistic 
owners has been helped forward with all possible legisla- 
tive enactments: and the fraudulent '-watering'' of stock of 
these corporations which is done in order to deceive and 
overcharge the public has been given its fullest scope. 

The effect oi such an one-sided attitude of the law-makers 
ot the United States was soon to be seen and felt. While 
the land-grabbing barons and greedy iactory owners of 
Great Britain had only succeeded in subduing and impov- 
erishing the English working classes and farmers with the 
whip, the branding iron, and the hangman's rope after a 
struggle of .300 years' duration, it has taken the smooth 
talking, oily politicians who represent the people ot the 
United States in Congress only 50 years, to drive the Amer- 
ican working classes into the same condition of misery, by 
means ot the laws which they have enacted. 

They have caused the public domain to be thrown into 
the hands oi monopolistic speculators ; they have allowed 
the national wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a 
small moneyed class : they have turned the [not long ago") 
prosperous wage-workers and small farmers of the United 
States into the fettered and chained victims of a foreign in- 
dustrial system which aims to benefit the smallest possible 
number to the injury of the overwhelming majority of the 
pie who adopt it, and which, if not checked, can in this 
country have only one final outcome, the erection of a plu- 
icy upon the ruins of the republic. 

And to all these reckless doings of their law-makers the 



150 A New Gospel of Labor. 

people have given either their full support or silent consent, 
until the ever quicker recurring crises with the enforced 
idleness and starvation incomes which they have inflicted 
upon millions of workmen and heads of families, have 
opened the eyes not only of the working but also of the 
middle classes all of whom now see the dangers which sur- 
round them, and are asking in ever}- village, town, and 
city, in shop, mine, and field, in the poorest workman's 
humble hovel, as well as in the Presidential mansion: 
"What can we do that the working classes may escape the 
merciless want, misery and starvation staring, at present, 
so many of them in the lace, and how can anions; the whole 
people an era of solid and lasting prosperity be established?" 



CHAPTER II, 



The Remedy. — A Law fob the Prevention of Industrial 
ami Financial Crises and Depression. — Is a Radical 
Measure Practical? 

It we did not live in an age where changes in the lives 
of nations that formerly would have taken hundreds of 
years to be brought about are now effected in the space of 
a few decades or even years only, it would appear as a fan- 
tastical undertaking to propose a remodelling ot an indus- 
trial system which affects not merely one class but the en- 
tire people, and which, if carried out, would produce a re- 
sal of the economical circumstances oi so many millions 
of persons as has never before been caused, or attempted to 
be caused, within tl 1 « • scope of historical times, by peaceful 
mean-. 

And if, notwithstanding the magnitude of such an un- 
dertaking, the author sets out to propose a solution of this 
problem, which consists in a radical change oi the presenl 
mode of production, he d<><- so knowing that, as individ- 
uals grow with their higher purposes, so whole people do, 
and that the mind- of men have the faculty, tinder the ne- 



152 A New Gospel of Labor. 

cessity of the hour, to become elevated to such an height as 
to be able to step over decades of mental progress in a few 
years, to adopt new ideas, and to carry them out in united 
action. 

If the people of the United States have this faculty — and 
during the 125 years of their history they have shown 
themselves possessed of it in a high degree — then there is 
no reason why they should not adopt the measure hereafter 
proposed, however novel it may be, or however far-reaching 
its consequences. 

For while it is radical enough to secure the desired re- 
dress, and while there is no doubt of its peaceable nature, 
it is also thorougly practical in all its working details, pro- 
vided the people be willing to adapt themselves to it by 
curbing their present habits of individual selfishness so far, 
as to become enabled to think and act in unison with their 
fellow-men for their common welfare. 

It is the author's firm conviction that the producing 
classes of this country have, through the lessons taught 
them by the hard times of the last 20 years, and through 
the ever darker appearing iuture before them already be- 
come enabled to rise to this moral and mental elevation 
which is necessary in order to carry the proposed solution 
of the nation's industrial and financial difficulties into ef- 
fect. But if they should be unable to do so, the proposed 
remedy loses none of its virtues, but it is simply in ad- 
vance of the times; and its adoption will only be delayed 
until after a period of such strife and struggle of the whole 
people among themselves, as the country has never seen 
yet, even in the darkest hour of the history of the nation, 
— and from which struggle it is most earnestly hoped it 
may be saved by the aid of the proposition laid down in 
the following pages. 



.i .\cw Gospel of Lobar L53 

the: REIMEIDV MUST B£ A STlP for\a/ard 
NOT BACKWARD 

So much has. iu the last chapter, been said about the fa- 
vorable condition of the working people under the indus- 
trial system practiced in England and Europe from 400 to 
500 years ago, that not a lew readers may think a return 
to that early mode oi production will be the ottered reme- 
dy. That is, however, not the case. Such a return would 
be a step backward into a passed age, to a semi-barbarous 
way ot living that could not be introduced now in any civ- 
ilized nation without bringing worse evils upon the people 
than tlie ones from which it desires to be relieved. 

For, tiie golden age of England's producing classes was 
the age oi handwork which in those days was sufficient to 
furnish the whole people with all it needed. Since that 
time the habits of life of the civilized nations have been so 
much changed, have become so complicated, that the hand- 
work ol olden times would be utterly insufficient to supply 
the demands of any civilized people of the present time. 

The census reports of 1879 to '80 prove this conclusively. 
They state that in that year 8,410,000 horse-power have 
been used in the manulacturing business alone; and as 
each horse-power used in industrial work is equal to the 
labor of six men, and the machinery driven by it equal to 
at least six men more, it follows that, besides the 2,732,00!) 
jMr^ons actually employed in the shops and factories of the 
United States, and who had turned out the national pro- 
duet of 1880 by the aid of steam-power and machinery, it 
would have required at least 40,920,000 more workmen to 
do so by handwork or a total of 43,652,000, which is 
25,000,000 more than the entire male population over 10 
years old of that year. 

The insufficiency ol the population to replace by work- 



154 A New Gospel of Labor. 

ingmen the machine and steam-labor used at present in the 
general production, makes it evident, that a return to the 
old-time methods of handwork of 500 years ago would be 
entirely impracticable. This subject might herewith be 
dismissed from farther consideration, were it not that, of 
late years, reiorm-propositions have been made whose pur- 
pose it is to re-introduce the small iarming methods used 
in feudal times, in order to put new life into the small and 
middle class of the farmers who are now gradually dying 
out in the deadly competition with the great capitalistic 
larms of modern times. 

It is necessary therefore to examine into the difference 
between the old method of hand-larming and the modern 
system of agricultural machine-work; and this can be done 
so much the better, because one oi the great nations of 
Europe, which is still in a half-savage state, furnishes living 
prooi for the comparison. 

A Russian magazine called "Nedelja," the oldest and 
most prominent paper of its kind in the Czar's empire, 
published lately the result of an investigation of experts 
into the state of Russian agriculture as compared with that 
of other more advanced nations. This report states that 
75 per cent, of all Russian farmland is divided into count- 
less little parcels, and belongs to the old-fashioned farmers 
who number together with their family members 40 mil- 
lions of souls. The remaining 25 per cent, of the land is 
composed of larger tracts and belongs to the nobility; but 
as two-thirds of it have been leased out to men of the 
small farmers' class, the latter control 90 per cent, of the 
Russian farmland which they work to-day in a manner but 
little better than the one used hundreds of years ago, the 
generally small sizes of the farms making the use of large 
machinery impracticable. 



A New Gospel of Labor. 155 

What is the consequence? Notwithstanding the fact that 
the land of the Russian prairies ranges, in fertility, far 
above that of the Western European countries, and is equal 
t - that ol the best American grain-land, it produces to a 
certain area of land only 89 pud [a Russian measure , 
while the production on the same quantity oi land in Italy 
i pud, in Austria 68, in Germany 74, in France 75, in 
the United States 81, and in old England \2'2 pud. 

This means that in Russia, with the old method of hand- 
farming on numerous little tracts of land, the production 
of the best -oil is one-half, one-third, or one lourth as large 
as in other countries with poorer soil but where the work 
is dune witli the use ol machinery on an extensive scale. 
And the tanning population of Russia is, in consequence of 
the small crops which they obtain, so pitifully poor, that 
they are often compelled to use the herbs and grasses of 
their prairies as nourishment, tor want ot something better. 

It needs hardly to be mentioned that the Russian farmer 
is as ignorant as he is poor, and not unjustly classed with 
the semi savages rather than with civilized men. 

But a religious custom oi theirs tells their condition bet- 
ter even than figures. '-When the Russian farmer," so says 
the above-mentioned paper, "harvests four measures of 
grain where he has sown one." he is well contented and 
gladly offers a portion oi his harvest upon the altar of the 
Mother of God as a token ot his gratitude.'' 

Thus the harvests ot the half-savage Russian peasants and 
the United States censu.- reports teach the same lesson, that 
the dividing up oi the farmlands into many small farms 
worked by SO many different owners, is a step back into 
poverty and barbarity, and that the use of modern machin- 
ery and steam-power is as necessary in agriculture 
as it has been shown to be on the field of industry and as, 



156 A New Gospel of Labor. 

it is in the transportation business ; and to abandon it 
on any field of modern labor would produce want, starva- 
tion, and anarchy. 

In endeavoring to find a better mode of production than 
the present one, the people must therefore not look back- 
ward ; they cannot afford to lose the advantages gained by 
science over the primitive labor of past ages, but must use 
all the achievements of the human mind on ever}^ field of 
labor as helpmates, and thus make the progress of the 
times conducive to the common weal. 



the: unnatural and the: natural 
use! of m aohinei-work. 

The machine is the product of generations of men's men- 
tal and physical labor, wherefrom it becomes its natural 
purpose not to benefit one man or a few only, but mankind 
generally, and the workmen, the inventors of all machine- 
work, especially, by saving them hard labor and by short- 
ening the time of labor which they would have to spend in 
producing by handwork. 

When in connection with this fact it is considered that 
the producing classes of every people must by their labor 
produce all the necessaries of life lor themselves and their 
fellow-men, and that, if they had control of the labor-saving 
machinery and could use it as an assistant, machine-labor 
would lessen their task, make it easier, and save a great 
deal of time to the workers, then it is evident that the lat- 
ter would become enabled to provide themselves and the 
rest of the people with many comforts of life which other- 
wise — by handwork — they could not supply ; and, employ- 



.1 New Gospel of Labor. 157 

ed in tins manner, the machine and steam-engine would be 

a useful helpmate and friend of the working classes, and a 
ring to the whole people. 

Under the present mode of production this is not the 
case. The capitalistic employers who own the machinery 

do not use it to make easier the workers' labor or to shorten 
their daily toil, hut to diminish the number of workmen to 
be hired, and to employ women and children instead of the 
male adult worker-'. For. the working men, who are the nat- 
ural supporters of families, require wages enough to keep 
not only themselves but also their wives and children alive, 
while the latter work for such low wages as will pay only 
for their own subsistence; and the employers always prefer, 
sake ol underselling their competitors and of obtaining 
the largest possible profit- incomes, the cheapest labor to be 
They ignore the right possessed by every man born 
to live and to have a chance to work for his living; they 
say like < ain : " Am 1 my brother's keeper? " And so the 
.per machine-work, in connection with the cheap women 
and child labor, is used to replace the workingmen to-day, 
tomorrow, and, in increasing numbers, all the time. 

Thus have, under the present industrial system, ma- 
chinery and steam-power become, as has been shown more 
fully in foregoing chapters, the inexorable competitors and 
dly enemies o! the workmen and, through the indus- 
trial disturbance- which they produce, a curse to the 
pie. 

A- this unjust, inhuman, and therefore unnatural us< 
:hine-work in the interest of the lew capitalistic employ- 
is one !>t tie- fundamental principles of the now 
tomary mode of production, and causes most of the evils 
Mating from the latter, it is obvious that a new system, 
introduce'! to abolish these evil-, must take the oppos 



158 A New Gospel of Labor. 

course and reverse the unnatural use of artificial labor in- 
to the natural one. It must make the now injurious ma- 
chine-work beneficial to the working classes who form the 
masses, the backbone of the people, and, for that purpose, 
give them the control of all the machinery used in the pro- 
ductive pursuits so that they may employ it for their own 
benefit and that of the rest of the people together. 

But machinery is only a part of the modern m^ans of 
labor; it cannot work without having a piece of ground, or 
a place where to stand ; a building of some sort to shelter 
it ; men to put and keep it in operation ; and raw material 
to make it productive. It, therefore, follows that, in order 
to utilize machinery, the working classes must be given con- 
trol of the entire means of modern labor, which include 
land, machinery, and capital. 



the: requirements of a new system 
of production. 

If an industrial system can be devised which will do 
that, then the evils, under which the people of this as of all 
other civilized countries suffer, will vanish one after another; 
child labor will be abolished, the use of machine-work reg- 
ulated, the working time proportioned between the amount 
of work to be done and the number of workers ready to do 
it ; the reckless production will be checked, the employers' 
profit-interests cease, and the workingmen's wages rise ac- 
cordingly ; the consumptive power of the people will there- 
by be increased, agricultural products obtain a proper 
price, trade and business thrive, not in spells but perma- 
nently; in fact, a system that could accomplish all this 



A New Gospei of Labor. 159 

would be the sought lor solution of the great labor-problem. 

To create such an industrial system that would give the 
working classes control of all the means of labor in shops, 
fields, factories, and mines, two things are required, an or- 
ganization ol the workers, and vast sums of money with 
which to obtain the plants ol the industrial establishments, 
the mines, the land, and the raw material. 

The lirst of these requirements, the organization, exists 
already, at least to a great extent, in the national federation 
<>f trade-unions which forms a network all over the United 
States, reaching into every state, town, and working place 
of any importance, except where prohibited through the 
superior power of the employers. This federation does, at 
present, not include the unskilled workers, nor the agricul- 
tural laborers; but as it stands aloof Irom all political af- 
filiations and religious squabbles, is Iree lrom prejudices of 
nationality, and has the sole purpose of bettering the con- 
dition of the working classes, it can at at any time be ex- 
tended to embrace all kinds of skilled and unskilled work- 
And there is no doubt that all these people, and also 
the numerous existing separate organizations would be eag- 
er to amalgamate with, or join this federation to form a 
grand national union of all the workers of the country, if, 
by so doing, they could help to create a new system of la- 
bor under which they were sure to get steady work at rea- 
sonable working hours and fair living wages. 

But not as easily as the organization is the second re- 
quirement, the capital, to be obtained with which the work- 
ing classes, in order to gain control of the means of labor, 
would have to buy out the owners of the same, or erect new 
establishments, open new mines, and farms, and fit them up 
with all the improvements necessary to create the national 
produce. For it is not to be expected that the present own- 



160 A New Gospel of Labor. 

ers would be willing to sell their industrial establishments 
on credit to the workingmen, or to do anything to help 
along a new mode of production which intends to supersede 
them and to put an end to their present accumulation of 
wealth. And if, as some people expect to see done, a law 
should be passed intending to expropriate the industrial 
plants, mines, lands, and what is needed in the production 
for the use of the people at large, without paying in full for 
all that is taken, a bloody revolution would be' the owners' 
answer. There remains then no other course for the organ- 
ized workers but to raise the vast amounts of capital re- 
quired out of their own means, or somewhere else. 



the: futility of private: co-ope:r- 

ATION 

Ridiculous as it may appear that people who are starv- 
ing on an average income of 26J cents a day should en- 
deavor to put up money enough to enter into competition 
with the ^reat capitalistic employers of the United States 
who have the control over a capital reaching into the many 
millions of dollars, yet, the effort to do so has been made 
repeatedly by means of co operative undertakings in which 
the members expected through their own small means and 
labor to rival the capitalistic production. 

All such efforts have failed alter a shorter or longer pe- 
riod of time, and will continue to do so in the future. 
From the statistical data quoted in previous chapters it is 
to be seen that the pay of the wage-workers does not nearly 
equal the capital invested in the different branches of bus- 



A fieu Gospel oj Labvt. 1(>1 

iness, and that any endeavor of theirs to duplicate from 
their limited income the employers' capital is therefore im- 

3ibl i Mi the other hand it has likewise been shown 
by other statistics that, in the competition of smaller with 
larger capital, the small owner- were, as a rule, driven into 
bankruptcy, or forced to sell out to their wealthier compet- 
itors. Between these two facts all co-operative undertak- 
ings of any kind, if carried on in the midst of, and in op- 
position to. a capitalistic competition that controls superior 
means must succumb ; and no help irom such sources can 
he expected to have sufficient financial backing to put a 
new industrial system into existence. 



WH^RE TO OBTAIN THE NECEISSARV 
CAPITAL. 

only manner then left in which the organized work- 
md producers could obtain the necessary capital would 
be by a loan; and as there is only one person on Earth 
who could advance to them the billions of dollars required 
for tin- purpose, they have no choice but to address theni- 
Belves to that person who is none else than the well known 
Uncle Sam, the government of the United States. 

The vehement objections that will at once be raised at 
tli is point center in the words: "Class-legislation" and 
"Paternalism;" hut however appropriate these objections 
may be in the case of some oi the quack-reforms which 
have of late years been offered by great and small political 
parties to allay the evils under which the people are suffer- 
ing, they are unjustified in connection with the proposed 



162 A New Gospel of Labor. 

new industrial system, as the patient reader will perceive 
by kindly following the arguments hereafter submitted. 

The purpose for which the aid of the national govern- 
ment is in this case, to be invoked, the establishment of a 
new mode of producing all that is needed and required for 
the sustenance and comfort of the whole population, — is 
not to benefit one class or only a bare majority of the people; 
not the wage- workers alone, but also the farmers, the pro- 
fessional men, and all those employers, traders, merchants, 
and property-owners who have only a small invested capi- 
tal and belong to the middle class whose members sutler, 
like the wage-workers and farmers, every day more under 
the aggressions of great accumulations of capital. 

In 1880 all these different classes counted about 47 mil- 
lions of people out of a total population of 50 millions, or 
93 per cent. Since then the percentage of these people has 
been increased through the rapid concentration of capital 
in the hands of an ever decreasing number of persons. 
But accepting the above stated percentage as correct at the 
present time, then only 7 per cent, of the whole people, the 
owners and employers of great amounts of capital, and 
their families, w T ere not to be benefited by the proposed 
change of the industrial system, but would claim to be in- 
jured by it, provided it can be called an injury, if they are 
prevented from keeping up their methods of plundering 
and impoverishing the nation. 

If any laws granting government aid to all the many 
millions represented by the above stated 93 per cent, of 
the total population, in order to protect them against the 
injurious financial manipulations of an insignificant class 
of 7 per cent, of the people, can be called class-legislation 
and denounced as contrary to the intention of the national 
constitution, what then are the laws by which the sugar- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 163 

owners receive a government bonus? by which owners of 
steamboat lines are given subsidies? by which empires of 
the public domain have been given as a bonus to railroad 
speculators ? and by which protective tariffs that injure as 
many, or more people than they benefit, have been created 
and kept in force since many years? 

And Id comparing the government aid granted in these 
cases with the assistance required tor the producing classes, 
the former directly benefits principally the money-interests 
of one class and the general public only in a far-off, secon- 
dary manner. Contrarily, the government loan desired for 
the purpose of changing the industrial system is of a di- 
rect financial advantage to nearly the whole people, and 
should, moreover, be granted for sake of justice and hu- 
manity, in order to protect millions of honest workmen 
against being defrauded out of their hard earned wages ; 
to save other millions of people lrom undeserved want and 
misery; to prevent that, constantly, uncounted numbers of 
toiling men, women, and children must bring, through un- 
derpay and overwork, their bodies, and too often also their 
souls, as sacrifices upon the altar of capitalistic avarice and 
greed. 

If any subsidiary measures herein demanded for such a 
generally necessary, beneficial purpose, for 93 per cent, of 
the people, be not allowed by the law, then Article I, Sec. 
VIII of the Constitution of the United States would be 
meaningless, when it declares, that "Congress shall have the 
power to provide for the general wellare of the United 
States." 

The objection of class legislation does, thereiore, not ap- 
ply to the loan to be asked lor by the organized producers, 
and the pretense which no doubt will be set up against it, 
that to introduce a new industrial system through govern- 



164 A New Gospel of Labor. 

ment aid would be a dangerous and unrepublican act of pa- 
ternalism, has no better foundation. By asking their rep- 
resentatives in congress for this aid, the people ask them to 
chose whether the nation shall be one of prosperous free- 
men or of dependent proletarians ; whether its majority, 
the producing classes, shall drift through a nefarious and 
cruel system of labor into a degree ol poverty that must 
finally end in the downfall of the republic, or whether they 
shall break the yoke laid upon their necks by ancient eco- 
nomical customs and become, once more, and this time per- 
manently, the freest and most prosperous of all modern 
people. 

If a government with such a choice before it would lead 
the nation out ol the old ruts of sordid selfishness and 
greed, on the path shown by humanity, into a new era of 
formerly unknown greatness, it could surely not be accused 
of indulging in weakly paternalism, but would only have 
fulfilled its duty and the functions for which all good gov- 
ernment, and especially that ot the United States, has been 
called into existence. 

But even the slightest tinge of injustice toward any por- 
tion of the people through the desired legislation will be 
removed, when it is stated that the aid required from the 
government will, if granted, not cause the latter any risk 
or expense, nor put any additional tax upon any citi- 
zen, but will, on the contrary, add to the entire nation's 
wealth and welfare in a number of ways. 

The manner in which this result is to be achieved can- 
not be made clear to the reader, until after he has become 
acquainted with the legal measure through which the pro- 
posed new mode of production is to be put in operation, 
aud therefore the bill the passage of which by congress for 
that purpose is expected to be obtained, is herewith sub- 
mitted. 



J. New Gospel ot Labor 165 

A BILL. 

To Pkkvent the Occurrence of Industrial and Finan- 
cial Crises. 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa- 
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. 

Sec. 1. That there shall be a new national administra- 
tive department created to be known as the Department of 
Labor, the chief ot which is to be called the Secretary or 
Labor, whose appointment, tenure of office, salary, and per- 
quisites shall be the same as those ol the other chiefs ot de- 
partments. It shall be the duty of the Secretary ol Labor 
to cause Labor statistics to be gathered and published in the 
same manner done now by the U. S. Commissioner of La- 
bor whose office shall be and is hereby abolished. It shall 
itirthermore be his duty to regulate, assist in, and superin- 
tend the organization of national and local Producers' 
Unions which are to obtain government aid, and to carry 
out the laws regarding such unions as hereinafter ordained. 

Sec. '1. That any local union belonging to a national 
Producers' Union incorporated under the laws of the 
United States, and desiring to work, farm, or manufacture 
co-operatively in the largest practical manner, shall be and 
is. hereby, entitled to financial aid Irom the United States 
Treasury upon making application for it through its na- 
tional union to the Secretary ol Labor. The application is 
to be made under oath and signed by the officers of the re- 
spective local and national union and to contain the follow- 
ing information: The name of the local and national 
union; the number oi the members oi the local union: its 
place oi bs; the amount of money required from the 



166 A New Gospel of Labor. 

government; the number of installments in which it is de- 
sired to be received ; a statement that all its members are 
workers or apprentices at the respective business alter 
which the local and national unions are called ; and such 
other particulars as are necessary to, accurately, describe 
and specify the intended co-operative work. 

Sec. 3. That, upon such application having been duly 
filed with the Secretary of Labor, the latter shall appoint a 
government agent who must be an experienced book-keeper. 
The agent shall get a salary of $1500 a year, take up his 
residence at the place of business ol said local union, and 
there act as representative of the government ior the pur- 
pose of guarding it against misappropriation of the money 
loaned to said local union by the government, and that the 
regulations regarding the said unions and their members as 
set forth in this bill be carried out, But the agent shall in 
no manner interfere with the business, or affairs, or mem- 
bers of any local union, but keep its books, and have access 
to its works at any reasonable or needed time ior the pur- 
pose of inspection. He shall give bonds in such a sum as 
the Secretary of Labor shall determine, for the faithful per- 
formance of his duties, and to secure the government against 
any losses. 

Sec. 4. That any such local union which intends to buy 
lands, shops, buildings, farm, mines, or similar means of la- 
bor shall obtain lor the same a good title deed, and give the 
government a mortgage duly signed by the officers of the 
local and national union for the amount of the loan which 
the government grants to the local union on such prop- 
erty. 

Sec. 5. That the money thus loaned to a local union 
shall consist of government bills to be issued for that pur- 
pose by the U. S. Treasury, at the proper request of the 



A New Gospel of Labor. 107 

Secretary of Labor, in denominations of 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 20, 

50, and 100 dollars, to be called U. S. Producers' Notes, 
and to bear the name of the national and local unions to 
which they are issued, the name of the place where said lo- 
cal does business, and such other matters as it is customary 
to print on government notes. Said money is not to be 
made redeemable in gold or silver coin, but shall form a 
lien upon the plant, land, and buildings upon which the 
government has the mortgage, and shall be received lor 
custom, taxes, and duties, and considered full legal tender 
ot the United States. When the different issues of the U. 
S. Producers 1 Notes shall have reached a sum which, to- 
gether with the now used coin or paper money of the 
United States, shall amount to §40 per head of the popula- 
tion, then henceforth the old money is to be called in and 
demonetized in the same ratio in which further issues of the 
T. S. Producers' Notes are made, until these notes form the 
only legal money of the United States and shall be further 
increased as the population and industries of the country 
lucre 

6. That eacli loan shall bear interest at the rate oi 
one per cent, per annum, to be paid by each local union an- 
nually to the government agent who shall transmit it to the 
S retary of Labor. 

Sec. 7. That the amount of wages to be received by the 
members ot a National Producers' Union, as subdivided in 
its local unions, shall be established by the national execu- 
tive committee which is to consist of delegates from the 
different locals, one or m >re from each according to the 
number of its members. These delegates shall meet in 
Washington, 1). I . as soon as a National Producers' Union 
jommenced work under this law, and al stated inter- 
val- thereafter. No wages shall amount to more than 



168 A New Gospel of Labor. 

$1000.00 per annum excepting officers' pay which may be 
more. 

The executive committee of each National Producers' 
Union is to regulate the daily hours of work of its mem- 
bers and the quantities of commodities to be produced by 
each local union. It shall furthermore provide for the pay- 
ment of full wage pensions to the disabled or aged workers 
and to needy families bereft of their supporters. The meas- 
ures adopted by each national executive committee are sub- 
ject to revision by the central national committee which is 
to be formed of the presidents of the different National 
Producers' Union, who shall all reside at Washington, D. 
C.j and meet monthly for the adjustment ot ail matters re- 
garding the mutual relations and interests of the National 
Producers' Unions. It shall also be their duty to propose 
to the U. S. Congress such legislative measures, and to re- 
commend such changes of the national tariff as may be con- 
ducive to the wellare ol the producing classes. 

Sec. 8. That any local union which has obtained a gov- 
ernment loan shall not have the right to borrow money 
elsewhere, or to sell or transfer its plant, land, or buildings, 
or any part of them. And whenever any local union ceas- 
es to work, then its whole property upon which the 
government has a mortgage shall revert back to the latter 
without any process of law. 

Sec. 9. That any member of any producers' union, or 
any government agent who shall be found guilty of mak- 
ing fraudulent business statements to the Secretary of La- 
bor shall be punished with imprisonment in the peniten- 
tiary from 1 to 2 years ; and if guilty of perjury or dishon- 
esty to be imprisoned in the penitentiary irom 2 to 5 years. 

Sec. 10. That each local union has the right to suspend, 
for a longer or shorter period of time, members who endan- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 169 

ger the welfare oi the union. The executive committee of 
a National Producers' Union can suspend any of its local 
unions, and the central national committee has the right to 
suspend any National Producers' Union. The suspended 
mem iters or bodies may appeal to the next higher body, 
and the final appeal to be to the Secretary of Labor. The 
law courts shall not have any jurisdiction over the business 
affairs ot these unions and their members. 

Sec. 11. That any person shall have the right to become 
a member of a local union who is a citizen of the United 
States, or a citizen's wile, son, or daughter; also all such 
persons who may be residents of the United States at the 
time when this bill shall be introduced in congress the last 
time before its passage, provided such persons declare their 
intention to become citizens. All persons arriving in the 
United States after said last introduction ol the bill before 
its final passage must become citizens of the United States 
after 5 years residence] before they can become members. 

Sec. 12. That the obtaining ot loans by any local union 
shall be limited, for the first three years following the pas- 
sage of this bill, to coal-miners only, and after that period of 
time to be open to persons of any other occupation. 

Sec. 13. That the Secretary of Labor shall establish 
such other rules for the purpose of assisting and properly 
introducing the new mode of production by organized local 
and national producers' unions, as shall be agreed upon be- 
tween him and the central national committee. 

Sec. 14 That any and all laws giving away, selling, or 
in any way disposing of, any timber, coal, or larm land, of 
water-rights, and of any other natural resources now in the 
possession of the United States, are hereby declared null 
and void, and that all such property shall, hereafter, only 



170 A New Gospel of Labor. 

be leased out, free of cost, to the different National Produc- 
ers' Unions organized under this act. 

Sec. 16. That this act take effect immediately. 



EXPLANATORY. 

For the sake of rendering this bill less tedious to be read 
and easier to be understood, it has been divested of the le- 
gal slang and verbosity generally used in drawing up laws 
enacted by the state legislatures and by congress. All un- 
important details have likewise been excluded from it. 
But in order to give the reader a picture of the complete 
workings of the proposed system of production under the 
new law, a local miners' union is in the next chapter to be 
accompanied through the different phases of the modus oper- 
andi, so that the intent of the above bill will become fully 
evident and easily understood. 

But before proceeding therewith, an explanation is need- 
ed regarding the section limiting the application of the new 
law for the first three years after its passage to the coal- 
miners only. 



THE PLACE OF HONOR TO THE 

COAL-MINERS. 

It is proper when such an extraordinary innovation as 
this bill is proposed to bring about is introduced among a 



A New Gospel of Lahoi. 171 

great people counting many millions of souls, precautions 
ought to be taken against failure and the losses and disturb- 
anees that may accompany it. Unless that were done, there 
is no doubt that many people who otherwise might support 
the new law as an experiment would work against its adop- 
tion, and prevent it irom bringing the speedy reliel which 
the country so sorely needs. 

To meet this difficulty, the condition that, for three 
years, the workers in only one great branch ol business 
shall be allowed to obtain a government loan, has been 
coupled with the law. And the reason why the coal-miners 
have been selected for this post ot trust and oi the gravest 
responsibility is, that while their product, the coal, is one of 
the greatest necessaries oi civilized lile and the most diffi- 
cult one to be obtained, endangering the livesof the workers 
during every hour and minute of their stay in the mines, 
the men employed in this business belong to the most bad- 
ly treated in the country. Their wages are low, never 
more, on an average, than a dollar lor every day in the 
year; they are subject in most mines to the infamous truck 
system which robs them of a part of their miserable in- 
come : their dwellings when rented from their employers, 
- is generally the case, are of the poorest kind, offering 
scarcely protection against the elements, much less any 
comfort of civilized lite : and their employment is unsteady, 
Leaving the workmen and their lamilies in constant care, 
anxiety, and trouble. 

At the same time the profits made by the employers out 
of the extravagant prices charged lor coal to the public are 
enormous, granting them the means to live in abund- 
ance and luxury, and giving them the power constantly to 
import cheaper labor from other states of the Union and 
from foreign countries, and thua to reduce their workmen 
to almost abject slavery. 



172 A JSew Gospel o1 Labor. 

And yet, under all these difficulties, the sturdy miners, 
facing death in many shapes while in the bowels of the 
earth, and struggling against want of work and starvation 
the rest of the time, have kept on organizing all through 
the United States, secretly and openly, against all opposi- 
tion, until their organization presents an almost solid front 
and includes the great majority of the mine workers. 

If to any set of men be due the honor and reward of be- 
ing the first ones to escape the wage-slavery, it therefore be- 
longs to the coal miners. And the success with which they 
will, without doubt, work and produce under the new sys- 
tem, notwithstanding the fact that there is a large ignorant 
element among them, shall furnish the best proof for the 
general feasibility of the new mode of production among 
all the working people of the United States, and remove 
the last objection to its general introduction. 



CHAPTER III. 



How the Natural Production is Carried on Under the 
New Industrial System, Without Employers, Hu- 
manely. Profitably, and Justly to All. 

It is to be expected that, as soon as the bill to prevent in- 
dustrial and financial crises has become a law, whereby un- 
der the three years' clause, in Sec. 12, the miners are en- 
titled to begin working co-operatively by the aid of govern- 
ment loans, quite a number oi local coal miners' unions 
will at once proceed to do so. The first step to be taken 
by them for that purpose is to iorm and incorporate a na- 
tional coal-miners union. 

This is done under the law of congress of 1886 which 
provides that two or more workmen's associations whose 
members are engaged in the same trade or occupation can 
incorporate as a national union by filing, in Washington, 
I). ( '., a statement giving the name and address of the lo- 
cal union- composing the national one, the number of their 
members, the names oi the officers elected to manage the 
national union, the name by which it is to be known, and 
the address of its headquarters which must be in Washing- 
ton, D. C. Under the new law it will be required that the 
president and secretary of the national union must also 
le in the Districl ol Columbia, so as to be able a1 any 



174 A New Gospel of Labor. 

time, to attend to the business of the local unions with 
the national one and with the labor department. 



APPLICATION. 

The local miners' union elects its proper officers, and then 
determines whether it will buy out an old mine or open up 
a new one. In either case the union must ascertaiu how 
large a loan it needs, including in the same not only the 
cost of the mine, or of the mining land and machinery, but 
also the working capital which is needed to procure the ne- 
cessary auxiliary material, pay the wage*, and defray similar 
current expenses. The application which the union makes 
for the desired loan must contain a detailed description and 
valuation of the property to be bought, and state the num- 
ber of installments in which the union will need the money. 
All these statements must be made under oath and signed 
by the officers of the local union, and revised and indorsed 
by the officers ot the national one, who forward it to the 
Department ol Labor. 



THE GOVERNMENT AGENT. 

After having examined the application, and when its de- 
mands have been found to be in accordance with the intent 
and purposes of the law, the Secretary of Labor appoints 
an agent who must be an able and experienced book- 
keeper and give bonds lor the proper and honest perform- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 175 

ance ol bis duties. The agent forthwith repairs to the 
place where the Local union has its headquarters, introduces 
himself, through his credentials, to its officers, and is pres- 
ent at all the negotiations between the union and the mine" 
owners regarding the buying of the latter's property. But 
he has no right to interfere in these or any other business 
transactions of the local union, nor has he to report to the 
Secretary oi' Labor about the affairs of the union, except 
when lie has proof ot fraud being perpetrated by the union 
or its officers upon the government, or of their violating 
the law regulating their unions, in which case the agent 
must, upon good and sufficient cause, inform the Depart- 
ment of Labor which has to investigate the matter and 
cause the guilty parties, if there be any, to be punished. 

The agent's salary is paid by the local union because he 
is their book-keeper. As such he is required to keep the 
strictest account ot the financial affairs of the local union, 
showing its income and expenses in such a manner that the 
union can make monthly reports thereof to the national 
union in Washington. The book-keeper must also keep a 
list showing the number of the workers, their age and sex> 
also a list oi the disabled union members, the number of 
hours worked each day by the miners, and the amount of 
coal monthly produced. 



the: m an ageim einx 



When the local miners' union has been granted the de- 

sired loan, and it is ready to proceed with its work, it elects 

superintendents, clerks, and other similar employes, and 



176 A New Gospel of Labor. 

also one or more delegates to the executive committee of the 
national miners' union. The union adjusts all its routine 
affairs through its officers and in its meetings, in which 
every member of the union has a voice and vote ; but of 
all its doings proper records must be kept which are at any 
time open to the inspection of the officers of the national 
union. 

The national executive committee must meet in Wash- 
ington, D. C, as soon as any of the local unions have com- 
menced work, and hold their sessions thereafter monthly, 
weekly, or daily, as may be necessary. Its duties are as 
follows : 

1. To ascertain from the statistics the probable amount ot 
coal to be used by the whole nation during the coming 
year; to obtain from the lists of the members of the local 
miners' unions the total members of local unions in the 
country; and to calculate from these data the number of 
working hours per day which are required, at steady work 
throughout the year, to produce the needed amount ol coal. 
In these calculations allowance is to be made for loss of 
time through sickness and private business of the workers 
and similar preventives from work. 

2. The committee has to prepare, from the lists of the 
age of the members of the local unions, irom death-rate ta- 
bles, and from statistics about accidents in mines, a proba- 
ble estimate of workers to become disabled by old age, in 
jured, or killed, or liable to die during the corning year. 
These injured and disabled veterans of labor, and the fam- 
ilies of the dead or killed members are to receive a pension 
from the union equal to the lull wages of a workman, un- 
less the persons entitled to a pension have an income from 
private sources, in which case their pension shall only 
amount as to much as would make their entire income 



A New Gospel of Laboi. 177 

equal to the wages of a worker. These pensions are to be 
charged in the cost of the produce to the consumers, where- 
by the entire population helps to support those who have 
spent the best part or' their lives in helping to produce the 
necessaries oi life tor the whole people. 

3. The amount of wages to be paid to the different 
classes oi workers and in different localities, is to be de- 
termined by the executive committee, so that in unions lo- 
cated where, for some reasons, iarm-produce are higher in 
price, the wages may be raised above those at other places. 

4. Regulations are to be made as to the extent and 
places where youths' and female labor can be employed 
without injury to their health or morals. 

5. Notice to be given to all unions which have too many 
members, in what other unions workers are needed; so that 
the working-time need not be longer, or more work be done 
ior the average wages in one location, than in another, if it 
can be avoided. 

6. Yearly enlargements of the existing mines, or the 
opening of new ones in proper localities, to be arranged 
for with the Secretary of Labor. 

7. The number oi growing up workers is to be kept con- 
stantly in view, and the executive committee must either 
increase the mines or reduce the daily working hours, in 
order to make room for them. 

8. All newly invented machinery for use in coal mines 
l- to be carefully examined and, if useful, to be introduced. 
All new appliances for the safety of the workers to be 
adopted and put in operation in ail mines at the shortest 

»le time. 
'<. Quarrels of members among themselves or with their 
local unions must be promptly settled by the officers of the 
local or by the executive committee, and punishments by 



178 A New Gospel of Labor. 

lines or suspensions from work can be ordered for reiraetory 
members, or local unions, so that those who lack the good 
will to contribute to the general welfare can be made to 
obey the will of the majority. The suspended members, in 
order to obtain a living, can only be employed as appren- 
tices in other occupations, where they must work at lower 
wages than the regular workers are receiving. The punish- 
ed members or unions have the right to appeal to the high- 
er bodies, first to the national union's executive committee, 
thence to the central national committee, and finally to the 
Secretary of Labor whose decision shall be final. 



OEINTRAL NATIONAL COMMITTEE. 

When, at the expiration of the probation-time of 3 years, 
other trades besides that of the miners shall have organiz- 
ed as national unions and commenced to work under the 
new system, the presidents of the different national unions 
shall form a central national committee which is to be in 
constant session at Washington, D. C, and at whose meet- 
ings the Secretary of Labor or his chief assistant shall have 
a right to be present and take part in the discussions but 
without the privilege of voting. 

This central committee has to regulate the affairs com- 
mon to all the National Producers' Unions, to equalize and 
establish the wages to be paid for the different branches of 
work, and the prices to be charged by the unions for their 
product. It. shall furthermore settle all difficulties between 
unions and national unions; it must investigate the needs 
of the producers and of the consumers, and recommend in 



A New Gospfl of Labor. 179 

their behalf such legislative measures to Congress as, for 
that purpose, it may (.loom necessary The tariff question 
is to lorm a special part of the considerations of the central 
committee, ^>» that the people may obtain from other coun- 
tries all that which cannot be got advantageously in the 
United States, and at the same time may be protected 
against being tiooded with cheap foreign produce that 
would cause a ruinous competition to the American pro- 
ducers. 

The central national committee has to provide for the 
wants of the yearly increase of the population, and 
must therelore strive to open up unsettled parts of the 
country to cultivation, cause the means of transportation to 
be extended, and to keep well informed on the state of bus- 
iness in every National Producers' Union, so that the shitt- 
ing ot workers from an overcrowded branch of labor to 
other ones may be arranged lor and carried out without 
any delay and consequent loss of time to the producers. 



PRICE OT PRODUCT TO B EI O H A R G EI D TO 
CONSU M ERS. 

The price to be charged by any union for that which it 
produces is to be equal to the cost of production. This cost 
is to consist of: 

1. The salary of the agent. 

2. The wages of all officers, workers, and pensioners, in- 
cluding those paid to widows and orphan-. 

3. The cost of medical expenses incurred in caring for 
workmen falling sick or becoming injured in consequence 
of their occupation as union members. 



180 A New Gospel of Labor 

4. The interest on the capital borrowed from the gov- 
ernment. 

5. A wear and tear-percentage sufficient to keep all the 
plants of all the unions in good repair and good working 
order, or renovated. 

6. The cost of all auxiliary materials, taxes, insurance, 
and similar expenses incurred in carrying on the national 
work of production. 

7. A wear and tear-percentage equal to the diminishing 
value of land, mines, minerals, or other natural resources 
caused by exhausting the same. This percentage is to be 
paid to the government, by the local unions from which it 
is due, once a year ; and the U. S. Treasury is to cause an 
amount of U S. Producers' Notes of the respective unions 
equal to the amount of their tax to be destroyed, so as to 
keep the value ol the unions' property and the government 
loans on the same properly adjusted. 



the: radical, change:. 

These are the main traits of the practical carrying out of 
the proposed law in a union not only of coal miners but of 
any kind of workers at some useful labor. They show the 
working of the new system sufficiently to make it clear how 
easily the change of the industrial system can be effected. 
It will make no more disturbance to turn the ownership of 
a mine or industrial establishment into the hands of the 
workers than if, through the death of its owner, it were 
conducted for his widow or orphans by an administrator or 
guardian. The work goes on as usual, with the same work- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 181 

men, and even perhaps with the same officers in charge of 
the work; the same product is brought forth as before; and 
no trouble, expense, or difficulty is caused to the consuming 
public, or to the people at large. 

Yet there is a most radical change; but it is one ior the 
better, and which, while in the beginning only affecting the 
producers, will soon benefit the whole people. The work- 
ers are, when working under the new law, not any more 
the slaves of an unknown owner or soulless corporation lor 
whose benefit they must work to-day long daily hours for 
insufficient wages, and tomorrow be idle, so that the owners 
can make "corners" in their product and fleece the consum- 
ers through high prices. The workers are not to be driven 
any more at their work by brutal hired overseers, but re- 
speetlully and fraternally treated by officers who, having 
been elected to their positions by the workers, will lose their 
places unless they treat their brother workers justly and hu- 
manely. The long working day is gradually cut shorter ; 
the wages are paid promptly and in such short intervals as 
suits the convenience of the workers; and their pay is in- 
creased and their living expenses reduced, because the 
former profit shares of the owners cease to exist, and are 
divided between the actual producers and the consumers. 

The reckless and unnatural production for the purpose of 
accumulating wealth comes to an end. and is replaced by 
the practical, natural production which is so regulated 
through the new producers' unions as to correspond with the 
wants of the people and its ability to consume. The con- 
sumption is stimulated through the guarantee of steady 
work and fair wages to each worker as long as he lives. 
The machine-work, formerly the enemy and competitor of 
the working ppople is rendered the latter's friend by lessen- 
ing the hours of their daily toil. Children's and other 



182 A New Gospel of Labor 

cheap labor is abolished. The increased wages paid and 
the steady work put an end to individual want and priva- 
tion, and establish a general condition of moderate comfort, 
while the pensions granted to the labor-veterans, the wid- 
ows, and orphans, and the support given to the sick and 
suffering put an end to pauperism. 

When the capitalistic employers with their enormous 
profit interests have disappeared from the field of the na- 
tion's industries, the creation of millionaires will cease, and 
with them the tramps and vagrants. There will be work 
for all; a fair living for every man, woman, and child. The 
industrial crisis will not return any more, the iron rule of 
the almighty dollar and of greedy selfishness over the pro- 
ducing classes of the country has come to an end ; honest 
labor reigns in their stead ; and the labor-problem, the 
great question of the age, has been success! ully solved. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Effect of the New System upon Immigration, the Na- 
tional Finances, and the Farmers. — No More Finan- 
cial Depressions! — No More Starving Farmers! — No 
More Superfluous Immigrants! 

The new system will solve the immigration question rea- 
sonably and justly. As stated in the bill, everybody living 
in the United States at the time of its last introduction be- 
fore its passage, who declares his intention to become a cit- 
izen, has the right to membership for life. But those arriv- 
ing after that time cannot be admitted, except after they 
have become citizens. That means, that these latter per- 
sons must wait five years, before they can become members 
of the producers' unions; and as there will hardly be any 
work to be done outside of the same, the immigration will 
practically be stopped, at least for some time. 

This limitation is an imperative necessity at a time when 
the whole United States are in the throes of an industrial 
revolution, such as the civilized world has never witnessed 
before and which, however peaceful it may be, requires all 
the intelligence and patriotism of its working classes to 
keep it controlled and in its proper limits. 

During that period, the continuing influx of the half- 
Bavage, tmassimilative cheap labor element which has al- 
ready flooded the country since 20 years, and been a will- 



184 A New Gospel of Labor. 

ing tool in the hands of the employers for the impoverish- 
ment of the resident workers of the United States, would 
through its ignorance and vicious characteristics form a fac- 
tor of great danger to the proposed system and must, there- 
fore, be kept away. And as their coming cannot be pre- 
vented under the present treaties which it might be trouble- 
some to alter, the adoption of the citizens' clause, which is 
in fact a five-years'-residence-condition, would completely 
achieve that purpose without causing international compli- 
cations. 

But later on, when the new system has been established, 
when the United States are steadily walking in the new 
path of permanent and increasing prosperity, and the im- 
mense extent of the country is ready to receive, employ, 
and support more workmen than the natural increase of 
the population can furnish, or machine-work replace, then 
the five years clause is to be modified to such a shorter pe- 
riod as will not prohibit the immigration any more, but 
limit it to those who have the means to stay here a certain 
time and to show by their intelligence and character, that 
they are worthy to become free workers under the new ad- 
vanced system, that they will readily accustom themselves 
to their new rights and duties, and form uselul accessions to 
the population of this country. 

The superfluous working people of Europe who thus will, 
for years, not have the outlet to the United States which 
they have had for 200 years, may in this manner be en- 
abled to force their governments into likewise adopting the 
new system of production, and thereby render it unneces- 
sary that so many foreign workmen leave their homes 
against their own wishes and inclinations, cross the ocean, 
and hunt for their daily bread among a strange people, who 
have through their own necessities been taught to see in 



A New Gospel of Labor. l s "> 

the new comers not welcome guests, but injurious competi- 
tors and enemies. 

When the governments ot Europe shall have accepted 
the mode ot production here proposed, then the immigra- 
tion question will cease to exist, and an International Pro- 
ducers' Congress regulate the shifting of w r orkers from the 
more densely populated countries ot the old world to the 
less inhabited continents in a manner which will give relief 
without doing injury, and which will help to tie the differ- 
ent branches ot the human family together by the 
bonds ot fraternal feelings, while at the present time, 
under the existing mode of production, the most civil- 
ized nations of the earth resemble a pack of hungry 
dogs righting for the bones on which they cannot feed all, 
but that may give some of them a scanty meal. 



A NEW FINANCIAL SYSTEM. 

The new industrial departure affects the national finances 
not less beneficially than it does the industries of the coun- 
try ; for it produces a national currency which, for inex- 
pensiveness, stability, honest value, and the aptness to meet 
the increasing wants of the people far surpasses the present 
one. 

To buy up the old, or open up new establishments of pro- 
duction, requires the issuing of (J. 8. Producers' Notes to a 
considerable greater amount, than that of all the different 
kinds of money together which are now in use in the 
United States. The government can, consequently, with- 



18(3 A New Gospel of Labor. 

draw the latter gradually and establish the new money as 
the only legal tender of the country. And as every dollar 
of it represents a dollar's worth of labor and material in- 
vested in some valuable plant and means of production, it 
is worth fully as much as a gold or silver dollar, and will 
readily replace the same in the interior and exterior busi- 
ness of the country. 

Or if, from want of confidence in the new system, the 
new money should not meet, at once, with a favorable recep- 
tion in other countries, gold and silver, [mined, like coal, 
by a national miners 1 union], might be employed as an 
auxiliary, until those foreign nations see the error of their 
opinions, or, convinced of the efficiency of the new mode of 
production, would adopt the same and, thereby, make the 
producers' notes the only money of the world, putting an 
end to the troublesome rule of the barbaric gold and silver 
coins, and of the unsafe and fluctuating kinds of bills, 
bonds, and notes, used as the money of the present 
time. 

Under the old system of production, where three-quarters 
of the people must take, as their income, what the few mem- 
bers of the moneyed class are willing to give them, the 
sudden increase oi the country's money-volume would in- 
jure the people by decreasing the value of the money, less- 
ening the buying power of the workers' income, and raising 
the prices of the produce which they must have for their 
living. 

But this danger does not exist under the proposed sys- 
tem which gives the great producers' class that forms the 
masses of the people the right to establish their own just 
wages, and to regulate the price of the necessaries of life in 
accordance with these wages. This arrangement complete- 
ly turns the tables between the great masses and the small 



A New Gospel of Labor. 187 

capitalistic- class, as much as during- the civil war the rela- 
tions of the slave-owners and slaves were changed, which 
has been so drastically described in the words ol the well 
known song ot the Southern colored people of that 
time: — 

" File master runs away, 
The darky stays at home! " 

Under the new system the former wage-slaves suffer no 
more irom fluctuations of the money-market or a shortage 
of money: tor their wages have not only become higher, 
but they are constantly so adjusted by the Central National 
Committee, as to always buy the same amount of the neces- 
saries of life. Not so, however, with the owners ot capital, 
the usurious money hoarders, loaners, and bankers, who 
under the present financial system play shuttle-cock with 
the money, contracting and expanding it at will, and fleec- 
ing the people at every turn ; but who under the new sys- 
tem with its plentiful supply of money lose the opportuni- 
ty of farther plying their nefarious vocation and lail to 
grow fat any more out of the need and misery ot the 
people. 

It needs not to be pointed out that a plethora of money 
among the producers and farmers, will also benefit the 
small business men, because that is a matter of course. 
And so it is only the members of the small moneyed class 
who, under the new financial system, receive no pecuniary 
benefit: for, with an abundant income guaranteed at all 
times to every willing worker, accumulated capital will find 
• nit few bor rowers : the interest-rate will consequently sink 
down to a minimum: the millionaire-fortunes, failing to 
throw off to their idle owners the present princely incomes, 
and having, most probably, to pay a heavy property and 
inlieritage tax, will be gradually consumed, and vanish, 



188 A New Gospel of Labor. 

leaving nothing behind them but the remembrance of 
the misery which they have once brought upon the 
people. 

It may confidently be asserted that this financial change 
is a benefit arising to the people out of the new industrial 
system, which alone would amply pay for the trouble of in- 
troducing the latter; an assertion the truth of which a 
glance at the evils produced by the speculation in money 
values in previous years and by the financial panics of the 
last two years must prove to every unprejudiced mind. 



the: effect upon the: farme:rs. 

It has, previously, been stated that a return to the small- 
farm methods must be considered as injurious, because it 
would lead to a decrease of production of the land, and im- 
poverish the owners of the small farms. There is, conse- 
quently, only one way out of their difficulty left to the in- 
debted small and middle-class farmers, and that is, to work 
in the opposite direction, to establish large farms that can 
be operated on a large scale, with the greatest available 
machinery, and with the best transportation facilities. 

In order to do this the farmers who wish to escape from 
the old system of working hard on their little farms and 
starving to death at it, and the farm laborers who work 
long hours every day for starvation wages must, as the min- 
ers and industrial workers do, organize into National Agri- 
cultural Unions and commence to work co-operatively un- 
der the new law. They may, for that purpose, either buy 
up farms or establish new ones on the yet unsettled nation- 



.1 A< id Gospel of Labor. 1,89 

al domain. In either case the unions get a loan Irom the 
l*. S. government with which they buy farm land, put up 
the necessary buildings, get their agricultural machinery, 
and everything filse needed to equip and put in working- 
order the new farm. And to secure the loan, the union 
giws to the government a mortgage on all its property. 

The farmers whose land is bought are paid in U. S. Pro- 
ducers' Notes. Former farm-owners and laborers may be- 
come members of the local unions in the same manner as 
miners, mechanics, and other workers, and under the regu- 
lations and restrictions stated in the above bill. 

The unions engaged in different kinds of agricultural 
work, as dairying, or the raising of cereals or fruit, or of 
cattle and horses, lorm different national unions whose ex- 
ecutive committees are, as in other branches of work, com- 
posed of the delegates from the locals and regulate the af- 
fairs of the latter in the manner stated in the last chapter. 
The presidents of the different national agricultural unions 
are members of the central national committee where the 
relative wages of mechanical, mining, agricultural and 
other workers are adjusted, the prices of all the agricultural 
and industrial produce regulated, and the interests of the 
tanners taken care of in the same manner as those of the 
miners or other workers. 

As soon as this new style ot farming comes into existence, 
the unions that carry it on with a capital which practically 
bears no interest will make a ruinous competition to the 
large farms owned and operated now by private individ- 
uals or corporations who have large amounts of capital in- 
•d, on which they must earn the usual interest, and, if 

ssible, a profit-dividend. The tables are now turned: 
The large farm-owner who, under the old system, through 
his superior capital and consequent advantages ruined his 



190 A New Gospel of Labor. 

smaller competitors and forced them to go into bankruptcy 
or sell out, is now under the new system himseli compelled 
to sell out to the agricultural union which is composed of 
the former small and middle class farmers and agricultural 
laborers, who with their superior capital and consequently 
greater advantages can raise the productivity of the land 
to the highest point, manage it more economically, and sell 
their produce to the consumers for so low a price as to 
render all private competition unprofitable. 

But in the same degree in which the large farm-owners 
will suffer under the new system, the actual farm-workers 
and the great consuming public will benefit by it. For the 
farm-produce will then not be sold any more, as now, at 
speculative high prices when the times are prosperous, and 
only at low rates when the people are too poor to buy it at 
any price, but it will always be sold to the people at such 
reasonable charges as will allow the iarmers a fair and 
steady remuneration at properly limited working hours, and 
be in a just proportion to the income oi the consumers. 

The advantages accruing to the farmers from the intro- 
duction of this new system do not stop there. It will alter 
their whole mode of living and bring it up to the standard 
of civilized life. Instead of living, as they do now, scat- 
tered over large tracts of land, reaching school, church, 
and the market only by miles of dusty or muddy country 
roads, the farmers, under the new method ot co-operative 
union work will live as near as possible, in the middle of 
the tract belonging to each union, lorming neat and pleas- 
ant agricultural towns with shops, stores, churches, schools, 
theatres, libraries, and all the modern necessaries of com- 
fortable civilized life which the farmers with their then 
abundant and steady incomes can afford to indulge in. 

In opening up new farms the present custom of using 



A New Gospel of Labor 191 

land utterly unfit for raising- crops will not be initiated by 
the new farming unions. The section ol the proposed bill 
which reserve- all the yet remaining public domain lor the 
use Oi the producers working in the different national 
unions, turn- the timber-land over to the loggers, the stone- 
land to the quarrymen. and the grazing-land to the cattle - 
raisers, all as organized in their unions; while the farmers 
will cultivate or reclaim lor cultivation such land only as 
has by nature been endowed with a soil which is fit, or 
can easily be made fit, for growing farm produce. 

Then the senseless and wasteful mode of establishing 
farms adopted of late years, especially in the Western part 
oi the United States, will be abolished, under which mil- 
lions of dollars worth of timber has been burnt in order to 
turn the land into ill-paying farms, endless time and labor 
has been spent in making grazing land produce profitable 
crops, and rock and stone beds have been covered with 
earth by the use of wagons, wheelbarrows, and even wom- 
en's aprons, to create a patch of garden-land whereon to 
make a living. And the same practices continue and be- 
come more frequent every year. 

Truly, a more striking illustration cannot be lound lor 
the dire straits into which the present system of produc- 
tion, with its capitalistic monopolists who grab up the land, 
resources, and wealth ol the whole country, has driven the 
home seeking producer. On one side miserable farms 
hewed out of the dense lorests, or built up on stony hills 
and steep mountain sides; and over yonder, not far away, 
millions of acres of the richest agricultural land lying idle, 
uncultivated, and not for sale, because held by wealthy syn- 
dicates, corporations, or millionaires lor speculative pur- 
poses in the future, [a it not time, that a more reasonable, 
more human a put an end to such a cruel and sense- 



192 A New Gospel of Labor 

less state of affairs which is unworthy of any civilized peo- 
ple and fit only for brute savages! 

The new farming unions will abolish these iniquities, 
and will moreover not only avoid the hard and useless la- 
bor of trying to change barren wildernesses into profitably 
productive farm-land, but lessen and make pleasant the 
now dreary work of the poor farm-owner. Where single 
men or women and children spend now their weary days, 
from early morn till late at night, in the hardest kind of 
hand-work on their unprofitable farms, ill-fed, worn out in 
body and soul, discontented, and without hope for the 
future ; squads of contented men will, under the new sys- 
tem, do their work easily, with the use of all needful and 
labor-saving machinery, and in reasonable working hours 
which leave time for recreation of the body and mind. 

Instead of the present streams of mud or dust called 
county-roads and farm-lanes there will be public and pri- 
vate macadamized streets provided with tracks for steam or 
electric motor cars traversing the farm-lands, so that the 
transporting of men, beasts, and machinery from the agri- 
cultural town to the farthest limits of the larms can be 
done without the loss of time or muscle-power, and the 
drudgery of farm-work be reduced to the smallest possible 
degree. So improved, the farin-liie will not be shunned 
any more by young and old but reinstated in the ranks of 
men's employments as the healthy, happy and pleasant oc- 
cupation which it always has been, wherever the farmers 
were free-men and not crushed by feudal lords or greedy 
capital. 



CHAPTER V. 



The Beneficial Effect of the New System of Produc- 
tion Upon the People. — It Changes Lives of Care in- 
to Lives of Eappiness. — It Marks Enslaved Workers 
Freemen, — It Fosters Knowledge, Art, and Science. 
— It Renders Man More Perfect. — It Cleanses and 
Thoroughly Reforms the Body Politic. 



THE: WORKER'S LIFE! OF OAREI. 

It man has been called the child of care, that word i> 
nowhere more true than it has been in the United States, 
during the past 30 years, and getting more so every day. 
rp to that time the vice, common to all classes of the peo- 
ple of this country, of making the chase after wealth the 
main object of life, was easily satisfied through the abund- 
dance of land and natural resources that were within the 
reach of the majority, and produced, therefore, comparative- 
ly little care. Since then, the more difficult hunt alter 
greater wealth, after millions, has brought more care to the 
wealthy, and the impoverishment of the masses, caused by 
the insatiability of the successful millions-hunter has 



194 A New Gospel of Labor. 

made anxious care the unwelcome but constant guest of 
the working classes, the farmers, and all the small business- 
men. 

What a curse care is, needs hardly to be described to the 
people who will read this book. The present want breeds 
it, and the uncertainty of the mture feeds it to ever greater 
proportions. It shrivels up the souls oi men ; it humiliates 
and degrades them ; it turns the strongest into cowards, 
and makes, with the help of despair, the weakest commit 
deeds of blood and crime. Care bleaches the bloom of 
youth in man and maid ; it destroys the happiness of hus- 
band and wife, and it poisons the very liie-blood of the 
babe through the draughts which it imbibes from the breast 
of its care-worn mother. 

Constant care has impressed itself, since the last genera- 
tion, upon the workingmen and women of the United 
States so forcibly, as to have changed the facial expressions 
ol the members of the whole working class, making them 
look less confident and more care-worn and discontented. 

The life of a worker in mine or factory, on the farm or 
on the railroads, on land or on the high seas, is in these 
modern times, at best, only a struggle lor existence with 
very lew bright and many dark hours thrown in. The 
great advantages of civilization are hardly known to him. 
He is introduced to hard and dirty work early in life, olten 
during his childhood, when he ought to play and know 
nothing yet of toil and labor. And yet there is hardly an 
American worker but who hopes for a better condition in 
the near future, because the days of constant prosperity, 
the golden age of the working classes of the United States, 
have only passed away so short a while ago, that there is 
the general hope prevailing of its return, may be in a few 
years, may be in a few months or weeks only. 



A New Gospel of Labai 195 

All in vain! The older the worker gets, the more he 
loses his hopes ; the more his family increases, the harder 
the hard times hear on him; want and privation move in- 
to his little homo and bring- care, trouble, and endless 
bitter disappointments. Poverty pinches him everywhere; 
his clothing is of the cheapest and ill-adapted to the sea- 
Bons, his home small and wretched, comparing poorly with 
the wealthy employer's stable tor his horses, fowl and cat- 
tle. His fare is coarse, and often not sufficient to give 
hack to the body the vital force taken from it by the pre- 
vious day's labor. Hard work leaves little time, and his 
scant income little means of enjoyment, but to eat, sleep, 
and drink. 

He feels his want of knowledge deeply and longs lor an 
opportunity to obtain it; he has talents and builds high 
hopes upon them. Millions ol workmen have worked ear- 
ly and late, saved, studied and battled throughout life, to 
cultivate their natural gilts and to rise irom their low em- 
ployments to such higher occupations, as their abilities give 
them the right to aspire to. But to be successful they need- 
ed money, and they were poor ! And poverty is an enemy 
which but few succeed in conquering; the majority suc- 
Cumbs to its iron rule with hearts made sick with a whole 
lile-time's deferred and deluded hope, only perhaps to go 
through the agonies of these disappointments a second time 
in the life of a talented child whose gilts are likewise buried 
under the same poverty and w r ant. 

The workman gets poorer with advancing age, for the 
employers want young and lively men, not aged ones who 
are getting slow and stiff' ! He sees his wife get worn out 
with work and privation, his children grow up in want and 
ignorance. He feels more bitterly his inability to extricate 
himself and them from their miserable condition, the more 



196 A New Gospel of Labor. 

intelligent he is; and the more he loves them, the deeper 
he is pained to see them suffer. Care and trouble finally 
never leave him; the scarcity of work, the fear of labor- 
troubles with their strikes and lock-outs, the insufficiency 
oi his wages, all this hangs continually over him and 
threatens, at any time, to crush him and his family under 
the weight of care, want, and misery. 

Woe to the workman, if he gets into the courts of law- 
Without influence in court, without money to retain legal 
talent, he must trust himself into the hands of robbing 
shysters and of the justice of the law, only to find that by 
both he is deceived. If lie sues a powerful corporation or 
wealthy person, he soon becomes aware that there is very 
little law ior the poor ; but there is an abundance of law 
against him, when he is sued by a man of means. And if 
he is unfortunate enough to have committed a misdemean- 
or or crime, the lull severity of justice which has, for that 
purpose, a convenient sliding scale of punishment, is dealt 
out to the offending workingman who is guilty of the un- 
pardouable crime of being too poor to buy justice by hir- 
ing able tmd influential lawyers. 

The old Greeks had a fable about a man named Tantalus 
who, lor his awful crimes against the gods, had been con- 
demned to suffer the torments of a hell, where the fruit for 
which he hungered, and the water for which he thirsted, 
receded when he stretched out his hand to reach it. As 
what harmless children these ancients appear in their ideas 
of hell, when it is considered that the high christian civil- 
ization ol modern times condemns, for no crime at all, mil- 
lions ol men, women and children, to see all around them 
every day that which they need and thirst and hunger for, 
and which is within their grasp, which they have even, 
themselves, produced ; but which they must not touch, nor 



.1 New Gospel ot Labor L97 

take, because a swindling profit scheme is continually 

cheating thorn out of the product of their own hard work ' 
But the worst feature of this life of the poor workman 
conies, when sickness steps in, which, from want of proper 
and speedy medical help that the poor can seldom afford to 
get, invites death to add its horrors to the misery of the 
family and carries off a dear child, or the all beloved wife 
and mother, or the father who supports them all. How 
much untold misery disease and death, thus caused by pov- 
erty, has brought and does bring every day, every hour, to 
millions of people in this great wealthy country, goes be- 
yond the power of men to describe. 

The genius of mankind veils his face at the bloody pic- 
ture of the slaughter ot the poor through the greed of their 
iellowmen, and weeps tears of bitter agony. But he who 
knows these things to be true, must have a tiger's heart, 
not to cry out against these horrors and not to be willing 
to battle with all his might to redress these wrongs which 
are condemned by all that is good and noble in the human 
race! 

For it must be borne in mind, that the misery here only 
weekly depicted, and which forms the condition of the ma- 
jority ot the people, is avoidable ; that it has not been caus- 
ed by natural necessity but is being kept up artificially, by 
means of a scheming system, in order that a small class of 
people may accumulate untold wealth which it is customa- 
ry for the successful possesors to flaunt, in the most osten- 
tatious manner possible, into the faces of those out of whose 
misery it has been built up. 



A CLASS OF EIARTHLY DEIMI-GODS. 

For, the representative wealthy man shows his elevated 



198 A New Gospel of Labor. 

condition above that of the workingmen in his whole mode 
of life, openly, not to say brazenly, whether he intends to 
do so or not. Through his money he is provided with all 
the advantages of the highest civilization, with elegant 
clothing suited to the seasons of the year, with a palace to 
live in furnished in a splendor which the poor cannot even 
imagine. He has choice viands and wines, attentive ser- 
vants, beautiful mistresses, and fast horses, pleasure yachts 
and coaches, fine pictures and valuable libraries, musical 
instruments of every kind, a host of friends, and access to 
the society of people prominent in all the higher pursuits 
of life. 

He enjoys, from early childhood, the opportunity of ob- 
taining learning and cultivating his talents; his wealth 
gives him influence to satisiy his ambition and obtain high 
and honorable positions. In sickness he is certain oi the 
very best of care, in grief of all possible consolation. If 
benevolently inclined, he has the means of making many 
people happy, and if of a vicious nature or greedy, it is in 
his hands to make life a hell on earth to those working for, 
or depending upon him. In iact he can live as he pleases, 
get what he wants, do nothing, do good, do evil, as he 
choses, and commit even crimes, knowing that his wealth 
will secure him against punishment. And the millions of 
workmen, whose labor lurnishes this class of people with 
the means to lead this life of earthly demi-gods, burrow in 
the mire of deepest poverty ! 



UNNATURAL INEQUALITIES CREATED BV 
WEALTH AND POVERTY. 

This glaring inequality is a crime against humanity and 



A New Gospel of Labor. 199 

nature. It is inhuman, because do man has the right to 
elevate himself by throwing down and stepping upon, his 

fellow-man: and that is what the moneyed -class are doing 
with the people to-day, as the feudal lords of England have 
dune with their yeomanry a few hundred years ago. The 
inequality is unnatural, because, if nature had intended the 
many to be the hewers of wood and carriers of water in 
the interest of a selected exalted few, it would not have cre- 
ated both with the same faculties, but made them beings of 
two different kinds. If it had been intended that the poor 
man's conjugal and paternal love should only bring him 
pain by seeing his family suffer with want, he would surely 
have been created without it. 

As nature has not shown by any sign on her creatures, 
that she intended anything of the kind, it is evident, that 
she did not desire the existence of an higher class of men 
whose greed would arrogate to themselves the privilege of 
enjoying all o! nature's faculties and gilts, and denying 
their use to the majority of men. When, nevertheless, such 
a privileged class exists, it does so in perversion of the laws 
of nature ; and as the present mode of production has 
caused this perversion, this unnatural inequality between 
man and man, and has, thereby, wrought unspeakable mis- 
ery in all the civilized nations, which is especially in the 
United States daily increasing in its extent and depth, it is 
the highest time ior that perversion to cease, and for truth 
and justice to prevail. And this end is achieved by the 
proposed new industrial system. 



A LIFE WITHOUT C A R EI-U N D EI R THE! NEW 
SVSTEIM Or PRODUCTION. 

By giving every worker steady employment and fair re- 



200 A New Gospel of. Labor. 

numeration for his labor, it puts the whole working class, 
men, women, and children, the majority of the people, into 
a condition of safety and comfortable living, without care, 
privation and suffering; a change Irom their present life, 
as a step from hell into paradise. 

Instead of rising, as beiore, unrelreshed from restless 
sleep, going to his daily, weary, and ill-paid toil embit- 
tered against fate or providence, or, when idle, looking with 
despairing heart for newly disappointed hopes in his en- 
deavor to find work, the workman under the new system 
will wake up with no weight hanging upon his mind ; his 
unbroken sleep lets him rise strengthened and refreshed 
a contented man, with little to trouble his mind about, and 
nothing over which to brood. He looks brightly into the 
morning sun, to him not a harbinger any more of long 
hours of care and despair, but ot a new period of pleasant 
labor, of joyful recreation, and of a happy life. 

When this care for the daily bread ceases, when his in- 
come is steady and sufficient, when his working hours are 
reasonable, when he is sure of careful treatment in case of 
sickness; when he knows that he can always provide for 
his family ; when he and they can dress, eat, and live like 
freemen and no more like slaves ; when he can educate his 
children, and in his increased leisure hours can find time 
to study and educate himself; when the pension for his old 
age and for his family alter him removes the Damocles- 
sword of pauperism now hanging over his head ; then it 
may be said that the life of the members of the working- 
classes is an existence worthy of an enlightened and civil- 
zed people, a life worth living, which will enable them to 
endure the unavoidable care and griei of all human life 
with more equanimity, and even make death lose its horror 
for the dying and the mourning relatives, because they are 



A New Gospel of Labor 201 

conscious that it does not add to the natural pain the fear 
for the future oi the helpless survivors. 



EFFECT UPON THE MERCANTILE CLASSES. 

This favorable condition of liie caused by the new mode 
of production is not confined to the direct producers alone, 
which embrace the industrial, mining, and agricultural 
workers, but it extends to every class ol workers employed 
at honest labor, and especially to the class of small mer- 
chants and those engaged in the transportation business 
and the learned professions, and who, though not as badly 
affected as the wage- workers, sutler, nevertheless, constant- 
ly more Irom the encroachment of large amounts of invested 
capital upon every field of labor. 

The increased wages of the working class enhance their 
consumptive power, and doubly so because their insured 
condition in old age allows them to live nearly up to their 
income. Counting this fact in connection with the steadi- 
ness ot their employment, which stops all industrial depres- 
sions, and with the safety and abundance of the new 7 mon- 
ey which excludes financial crises and panics, the small 
merchants who gain their main support irom the working 
classes, may look forward to a higher and steadier degree 
of prosperity in their line of business than this country has 
ever seen before. 

But a.- this prosperity would be checked by the competi- 
tion between the small shop-keepers and the aggressiveness 
of the wealthy wholesale merchants, it may well be expect- 
ed that, niter the successful introduction ot the new system 



202 A New Gospel of Labor 

on the field of industry and agriculture, the workers in the 
mercantile business, the clerks and small merchants, will 
organize in national unions and, with the aid of money ob- 
tained irom the government, soon take the entire mercan- 
tile business, wholesale and retail, into their own hands. 
This would be the end of the accumulation of wealth by 
the merchant-princes, the end of the ruinous competition 
and consequent bankruptcies among the small business 
men, the end of the misery of the hundreds of thousands 
of ill-paid male and female clerks, and the commencement 
of a reasonable and systematic mode oi distributing the 
produce to the consumers, of which, under the present ab- 
surd custom of shop keeping and shopping, one can scarce- 
ly form a correct idea. But so much can be foreseen with 
safety, that the workers in the mercantile business will, un- 
der the new system, be better paid, less hard worked, and 
more contented and self-respected than when worrying 
themselves to death in their own little business, or when 
slaving their lives away for small wages and at uncertain 
employment in the service of a task-master whom their 
labor enriches. 



EFFECT UPON THE TRANSPORTATION BUSINESS. 

The new system will solve, in theonly manner fit for this 
country, the question as to the proprietorship of the means 
of transportation. How the whole people are presently 
robbed, right and left, through railroad and steamboat cor- 
porations with their excessive rates of freight and fare, caus- 
ed by the watered stock swindle and monopolv-combina- 



A New Gospel of Labor. 203 

tiona while the people hove no means oi protection, is a 
well-known laet. The proposition to end this injurious con- 
trol by private individuals of the arteries oi trade and com- 
meree by letting the national government obtain the owner- 
ship is objectionable, because it would burden the adminis- 
tration with hundreds oi thousands of new government 
employes, make it unwieldy, and produce a centralization 
of politieal power which is monarchical and, therefore, 
dangerous to a republican form ot government. 

The remedy lies between the two methods mentioned. 
The majority of the workers on railroads, steamboats, tel- 
tph and telephone lines being already well-organized, 
it would be only a small step forward tor their associations 
to turn into national unions, to obtain from the U S. gov. 
ernment the necessary means to buy out at a reasonable 
price the companies having the transportation business with 
all its branches in their hands, and to operate the entire 
means of communication in the whole country by the 
workers in the interest of the people. 

As these union would include all the employes, from the 
highest superintendents down to the lowest workmen, the 
change need not bring any disturbance at all ; there would 
not be a day's or hour's interruption of travel, and yet the 
change would be immense. The dangerous corporation 
power would cease, the people would not be fleeced any 
more to create all-influential millionaires and railroad 
king's ; the killing, in tl cruel way, oi thousands of 

travelers and employes through the greed of the present 
railway owners would be limited to the lew unavoidable ac- 
cidents, and the whole business managed by the proper ex- 
pert workers in the most systematic and economical man- 
ner for the people, and at the same time to the lasting ben- 
efit ot the employe-, whose condition would be improved 



204 A New Gospel of Labor. 

in the same manner as that of the members of the indus- 
trial, agricultural, and mercantile unions. The objection 
that some of the companies might reluse to sell out, could 
easily be met by duplicating their railroads or telegraph 
lines, which would cost less money than to buy out the old 
ones, and would hurt none but the refractory owners. 



THE EFFECT UPON THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 

It is evident that, with the whole working people so or- 
ganized, well paid and provided for, the men and women 
engaged in the learned professions will have a better future 
before them than the present times allow them, when thou- 
sands of persons of both sexes rush into the professions as 
their only hope of making a respectable living. But, in 
fact, the majority of them soon become professional proleta- 
rians, whose misery, though covered with genteel rags of 
clothing and hid behind office doors, is only little less 
marked than that of the unemployed workmen. 

Under the new system the rush into the professions will 
cease, because, when labor will not only be respectable, but 
well paid and steady, many of the professional men and 
women without work will rather learn and work at a trade 
and live by it comfortably, than starve in their offices. 
And those who stay in the professions will be able to find a 
better outcome among a prosperous population than among 
one w T hose great masses are bordering on starvation. 



A New Gospel 0/ Labor. 205 

eFFBOT UPON THE MONEYED CLASS. 

The only class of people left which lias not been 
mentioned as beneficiaries oi the new system are the great 
capitalists, the hankers, the big employers, the money- 
hoarders and Loaners. They cannot be financially benefit- 
ed by the proposed change, because their business of draw- 
ing big profit-interests out of the labor and misery of the 
producers 3 si pped by the new system. And as the peo- 
ple will, by the time the latter becomes a law, probably 
have learnt to understand the usurious manner in which 
most of the capital in the hands of the moneyed class has 
been ground out of the people as unpaid wages and extrav- 
gant prices, there will perhaps, at the same time, another 
law be passed putting a heavy tax upon all the large pri- 
vate fortunes whether composed of land, buildings or 
money. 

By this means and by the impossibility of investing 
their money and drawing large interests out of the people, 
the millionaires will have to eat up their fortunes and be 
compelled to come down irom the dizzy heights of life 
where they now perch like the birds of paradise in all the 
glory oi their glossy colors, where their hearts get chilled 
and their affections alienated from the rest of mankind. 
The -rem will lower them from this unnatural eleva- 

tion, and, drawing them nearer to the people, will re-awaken 
their human feelings and sympathies, will smother their 
adoration of God Mammon, and render them useful mem- 
society and patriotic co-workers for the common- 
weal. 



(NO SOCIALISTIC OR COMMUNISTIC 
SCH EIM El. 

Jt is to b - n. that. ;i- soon a- the extenl of the 



206 A New Gospel of Labor. 

chaDge to be produced by the new system has been an- 
nounced, the cry will be raised by some people that the 
proposed law is a socialistic scheme of equalizing every- 
thing, of wiping out the natural differences between rich 
and poor, of putting the whole people upon a lower plane 
of intelligence, and of placing them under prison disci- 
pline. This cry will find a ready echo with those persons 
who believe any effort of the working classes to ameliorate 
their condition to be an infringement upon the rights of the 
employers ; but the objection which it raises against the 
new system is, nevertheless, totally groundless. 

If by the word "Socialistic" be meant, being connected 
with or emanating from, the Socialistic Labor Party, the 
error can easily be proven. When the author of this book 
had, 7 years ago, prepared a similar bill as the one here 
proposed, and caused it to be introduced in the House of 
Representatives of Congress in 1887 as House Bill No. 
11,185, it was violently assailed and condemned by the of- 
ficial paper of the Socialistic Labor Party of the United 
States, on Febr. 27th, '87, in an editorial which contains the 
following passages: 

"If the bill could be amended to read 'the establishment 
of government work shops owned and controlled by the 
government, where none but union men should be employ- 
ed,' we should feel more inclined to lend it our support." 

And further on : 

"As the bill now reads, we are impelled to warn our read- 
ers against seriously considering it for a moment. For- 
tunately there is not the slightest danger of its becoming a 
law ! " 

These two extracts certainly show that the bill here pro- 
posed, which is to all intents and purposes a copy of the 
bill of 1887, is not a Socialistic measure; but as they do 



A Neu Gospel of Labor. 207 

not show their lull difference of opinion with that which 
this hook endeavors to teach, a lew words ot explanation 
may be added. 

The trouble with the Socialists is. that they are confident 
that the tend between capital and labor must terminate in 
a bloody revolution in this as in all other countries. Hence 
they confine their teachings to showing the necessity of 
abolishing the present industrial system and to preaching 
\the doctrine ot class-hatred. And as hatred destroys only, 
but does not build up, they have so far not been able to 
point out any measure by which a change could be brought 
about peaceably and legally, and look with affected con- 
tempt upon all such efforts. 

►ntrary to these socialistic ideas and doctrines the au- 
thor of this book, fully believing that the intelligence of 
the people of this country can solve the labor-problem at 
the ball 'Ices not stop at exposing the injustice done 

and the inhumanity practiced by the present mode of pro - 
duction, but shows how the same can be changed legally 
and peaceably, so that every man. rich and poor alike, may 
have an opportunity of becoming a worker at some useful 
labor. 

While the law herein proposed has, therefore, no obnox- 
ious socialistic features about it. it has nothing to do either 
with the leading ncies of the old French communistic 

writer- of the earlier part of this century, which were an 
rmath of the great revolution of 17(rj and endeavored 
to equalize all men and conditions. 

The ii l will not produce any such communistic 

equalization. It endeavors i<> give every man what he 
honestly • arns, and at the same time prevent.- any class or 
individuals irom fattening upon any gains extorted from 
their fellowm en. law prevents a robber irom gel 

rich by taking that which does not belong to him. But the 



208 A New Gospel of Labor. 

new system does not lower the mind of any man to a low- 
er level; on the contrary, it tries to raise the lowest up to 
the highest possible standard. 

The present pernicious system works in the opposite di- 
rection. When 46| millions of people out of 50J millions, 
or 93 per cent, of the whole population were reduced, in the 
prosperous year 1880, to an average income per head of 
$95 a year or 26 cents a day, they were leveled down into 
a low swamp of poverty which bred ignorance, vice and' 
crime among many millions, and which could not be offset 
by the financial elevation to which the 3J millions of the 
moneyed class with their multi-millionaires towered so 
high above the great masses, the 93 per cent, of the people. 



the: mental and moral, elevation or 

THE GREAT MASSES UNDER THE 
NEW SYSTEM. 

The new system cuts down these excrescences of extreme 
wealth and uses them to fill up the swamps of poverty, so 
that the majority of the people may rise up to the higher 
plane where the malarial air of misery cannot reach and 
disease them in body and mind. 

It is true, there is a prejudice prevailing to the effect that 
the more leisure the working people have and the higher 
an income they enjoy, the more dissipated and degraded 
they will become; but experience proves the contrary. It is 
a fact proven everywhere, that the best paid of the workers 
and those most steadily employed are the most intelligent, 
live most respectably, and are, comparatively, free from the 
lower vices; while the poorly paid workmen, those oftenest 



A New Gospel of Leo or. 209 

unemployed, form the most ignorant and vicious element 
of the working i sses 

S i great is the appreciation of a higher education a^ong 
the working classes o( the United States, so strong their de- 
sire to obtain more knowledge than they were able to ob- 
tain in their younger days, that, with their increasing time 
oi leisure, great numbers of them will, undoubtedly, devote 
themselves to regular courses of study. And as. under the 
new system, all newly invented machinery is to be used to 
shorten the time of labor, the actual working time must 
SOOD be reduced to a few hours per day, when the great 
opportunity for the advancement of the masses of the peo- 
ple is offeriug itself. 

At present, the cultivation of the arts and sciences lies in 
the hands ot the comparatively small number of persons 
who sses* the means and time for pursuing the necessary 
studies. The work of the brain and mind is thus leit to a 
small number of people only, while the great masses are 
condemned t<> perform nothing but bodily labor. 

Is such an arrangement reasonable? Or is it not ex- 
tremely unreasonable that the great majority of men shall 
wear out their bodies by too much hard work, in order that 
a few others may have the privilege of weakening their 
bodies through effeminating luxury and idleness? And is 
it not unreasonable that the great majority of the people 
shall become stupid by not having an opportunity to exer- 
their mental faculties while a minority wears out and 
diseases their brains by exerting them too much? 

When nature gave to every normal human being a brain 
to think, and limbs to work with, she clearly indicated that 
they should be physical as well as mental workers. And 
as the creatures of nature cannot be perfected but by fol- 
lowing the way she has pointed out, it is apparent, that 



21 A New Gospel of Labor. 

men can only become more perfect by a constant reasona- 
ble use of their mental and physical powers, or in other 
worws, by becoming mental and physical workers. And 
to this effect the new system serves in the best possible 
manner. 

With the time of daily toil properly reduced and the 
income raised sufficiently to clear the workers' mind from 
troubling cares, they will spend their leisure hours in the 
free lecture rooms, libraries, schools, and colleges which the 
Unions will provide ior old and young, and the study of 
arts and sciences will thus become the occupation of the 
great masses. The worker will do the lew hours' work re- 
quired for his share in the national production in the morn- 
ing, thereby resting his mind and giving his body a health- 
ful exercise; after which he will spend as many hours in 
mental work, thereby resting his body and exercising the 
faculties of his brain. 

In this manner knowledge in all the different branches 
of learning will be spread; the cultivation of science and 
art, now the privilege of a limited number, become the oc- 
cupation of the masses; prejudice and ignorance will van- 
ish more with every succeeding generation, the present am- 
bition of man to rise above his fellow-being by acquiring 
more wealth will be replaced by the nobler ambition to ex- 
cel by superior knowledge, and the whole people will ad- 
vance physically and intellectually to a degree of perfection 
which under the present order of things it can never ob- 
tain. 

It will do more! By carrying the new gospel of labor, 
of peace, and of prosperity, to the other nations of the 
world, civilized and uncivilized, it will cause the whole hu- 
man race gradually to cease warring against each other in 
the struggle for the daily bread and to become competitors 



A New Gospel of Dabm 2J 1 

only in the peaceful struggle for obtaining a higher civili- 
sation, which all of them badly need. 

For while the present system breeds and feeds a war of 
all against all. oi the employers against the workers, and of 
the workers and employers against each other, in which 
war the most unscrupulous, greediest ami wealthiest only 
survive; the new system stamps out this war, makes peace 
between all mem and enables the largest possible number 
irvive and prosp< r. 

Thar is the kind of an equalization which the proj 
bill will introduce, and in doing so it will have humanity 
and patriotism on its side; humanity, for improving the 
condition of the human family generally, and patriotism, 
strengthening the great political fabric of this nation 
especially, and aiding to uphold its tree institutions. 



EFFECT UPON THE NATION, POLITICALLY. 

There can be no doubt that with the vast masses of the 
90 unproved physically and mentally, the citizens 
will be more conscious of their political duties, more capa- 
ble to understand them, more fit lor self-government, and 
better enabled to lead the ship of the municipal, state and 
national affairs of this country out of the shoals of incom- 
petency and dishonesty between which it has been tossed 
it since year.-. 
Why is it. that in this young country, nearly one-half of 
whose states have only been cut out of the wilderness dur- 
ing the last two generations, there is hardly a state, county. 
city, school or road district, but what \s burdened to its ut- 

st capacity with bonded and other interesl bearing d< 
besides the debt oi the national government? 



212 A Ne?v Gospel of Labor 

Why is it, that most of our public administrations, from 
the national one in Washington D. C. down to the smallest 
town council, use sums of money every year which bear the 
brand of extravagance, if not iraud, upon their face, and 
which sums are increased rather with every following admin- 
istration than lessened ? 

Why is it, that the public works and improvements car- 
ried on throughout the country are, as a rule, done in an 
improper manner and, no matter whether done well or 
badly, cost more, and oiten iar more, than a private indi- 
vidual would pay for them ? 

Why is it, that law alter law, alter having been discussed 
and passed by state legislatures and even by congress, is 
iound, when brought to the test, to be unconstitutional or 
rendered invalid through some technical delect, and that 
the laws which are good and sound are not carried out b} r 
our officers of the law and courts of justice, so that,in many 
cases the injured parties are compelled to help themselves 
by taking the law into their own hands ? 

And why is it, that the people knowing all these evils to 
exist, and trying to abolish them, one day through this po- 
litical party, the next day through another one, and the 
third day through still another party, tail to do so, and 
that the evils grow on them daily to ever larger dimen- 
sions? 

The one true answer to these questions has, to the 
author's knowledge, never been stated in public print, and 
yet it is easily to be given: The people of the United 
States have, since the foundation of its government, en- 
deavored to administer the public affairs of this country 
through persons who were not educated and trained for that 
important business, and whose fitness or unfitness even 
were totally disregarded. This was an experiment never 



A New Gospel of Labor. 213 

tried within historical records by any other people of 
any degree of civilization: but although it has signally 
tailed and brought on the official semi-anarchy now ruling 
and ruining the country, it has been and is being kept in 
full force and virtue till to-day, and cannot now he abolish- 
ed, except with a change of the present industrial system. 

When in the beginning of their national career the peo- 
ple set up the maxim, that every citizen who was elected or 
appointed to office would be lit to fill it, it was expected 
that the voters would in the interest ol the public weliare 
select the best men from among them. And as the states, 
counties, and cities were small, and numerous men availa- 
ble for public office who had held positions of trust before 
under the Colonial Government, and as the patriotism of 
the men who tought out the war of the Revolution success- 
fully and victoriously had not yet died out, but exercised 
a wholesome influence on the civil affairs of the young re- 
public, the evil of the novel experiment of having untrain- 
ed officials did not show its bad effects until years later. 

But gradually public watchiulness died out, men began 
to hunt for office: and when, through the open declaration 
of a President of the United States that "to the victors be- 
long the spoils," the spoils-system was officially introduced, 
by which the national offices became the rewards of, and 
sinecures for, political partisans without regard to their 
character, ability or general fitness tor public office, then 
the American system of office-holding began rapidly to 
bear poisonous Iruit. 

- were not sought any more for the honor connect- 
ed with them, but for the financial gain to be got out of 
them. Office-seeking and disposing of offices bccani< 
business, • specially in the large cities filled with a certain 
large and ignorant element. To make that business sue- 



214 A New Gospel of Labor. 

cessful, the primaries had to be and became controlled by 
the party bosses, and thus the people lost the power to se- 
lect their own officials, retaining only the privilege to vote 
for the candidates whom the political ring-leaders have 
chosen. 

The evil grew still worse, when the labor-trouble with its 
want of employment and small pay for the workers made 
its appearance and drove thousands of men into politics 
with a view of making a living out of it as political work- 
ers or by getting an office whicli would give them, at least 
for some time, steady employment and a lair income. From 
this time on, the national politics became one vast scramble 
for office with hardly the trace of a principle in either 
party. 

But the climax has been reached only of late years, 
when, through the relentless war of both parties for the 
national spoils, the mandate was issued by the party bosses, 
that henceforth all the local elections should be fought out 
on national party lines, so as to make the local party ma- 
chinery assist in winning the national election for Congres- 
sional members and the Presidency. At the same time, in 
order to reward and always keep on hand a number of po- 
litical workers, the subordinate offices were increased every- 
where and filled, preferably, with young men just growing 
into manhood, who?e youth rendered them pliant tools of 
the party bosses in manipulating the primaries, and in do- 
ing electioneering work on and before election day. 

Thus the original experiment of the people selecting for 
the public offices from among themselves men untrained 
for public business, has in less than 100 years been chang- 
ed into a system of boodle-politics, by which the party-or- 
ganizations or machines, led by a few designing men, the 
party bosses, select the candidates which to the latter seem 



A New Gospel of Labor. '2 1 5 

best fit to serve the interests of the party leaders: and the 
people only retain the privilege of chosing from be- 
tween the different sets of candidates the least incompetent 

or disreputable ones. 

The men so voted into office by the people, but actually 
chosen by the party bosses, are expected first to draw as 
much financial gain out of it, as possible, for themselves, 
their families, their relatives, their personal and political 
friends; their next duty is to make the influence of the of- 
fice serve the party bosses and party; and lastly, the office- 
holder may take in consideration the interest of the people 
or he may not do so, just as he feels inclined. 

That is the system of self government by, of, and for the 
people, at present and since some years in use in the Unit- 
. States; it is the rule all over the country, in city, county, 
state and lederal offices, and the exceptions to it, which the 
enraged people sometimes make, are lew and generally 
turn out to be as bad as the regular boodle officials. 

It is true that, ot late years, efforts have been made to 
check and reform this evil by the introduction of the civil 
service reiorm for national appointive offices; but the inno- 
vation has been so badly received by the leading men of 
both parties, that those in power have become encouraged 
to enforce it no farther than among the subordinate officials 
whose positions require the least amount of knowledge and 
experience. For the all-powerful politicians do not desire 
a change in the present boodle system of appointing or 
electing officials and have, very openly, signified their op- 
tion to it. The prominent republican citizens who first 
introduced the civil service reform were nicknamed "mug- 
wump.-,*' and called traitors to the republican party; while 
the democrats denounced their own President who, too, fa- 
vored the new proposition, as a traitor to Jacksonian Dem- 



216 A New Gospel of Labor. 

ocracy. The fact that the efforts of some of the most high- 
minded and patriotic men in the country, to establish a 
system of appointing men to office according to some meas- 
ure of fitness, have been violenty traduced and maligned, 
show better than any other statements that could be made 
the firm hold which the boodle system of office-holding has 
upon the people. 

The consequence of having a large countn^ governed by 
such a system is by this time plainly to be seen everywhere. 
Incompetency, dishonesty and extravagance stalk broadly 
about in all the offices ot the land, local, state and national 
ones alike. The public money is squandered; the public 
work done badly; engineers, architects and contractors who 
do not or will not understand their business, except for 
their own gain, are employed because of their political 
pull. The law departments of the municipalities are most- 
ly in the hands of inexperienced lawyers who do more 
harm than good. The courts are managed by judges who 
draw big salaries but who, in many cases, know little of the 
law and, in most cases, less of justice, serving their politi- 
cal party and the influential men and corporations first, and 
the people last. The legislatures and Congress are com- 
posed of men, the most of w T hom know no more of states- 
manship, national economy, finances or tariff matters, than 
what they have read in newspapers ; and the laws they 
make [although most of the legislators are lawyers] are in- 
valid, full of technical loopholes and defects, or injurious to 
the people. And to complete the evil fruit of this system, 
the decreasing sense of honor, duty, and honesty among 
the people's representatives in high offices reflects back up- 
on the people, corrupts through its bad public example the 
rising generations, and lowers the moral standard of the 
entire nation. 



A New Gospel of Labor. '2 1 < 

I- it a wonder, that the country is sliding down fast 
oward bankruptcy through the debts piled upon it By its 
incompetent and dishonest officials, and that the people 
have got weary of the burden of its taxes and look despair- 
ingly for redress from any quack-reform, old or new, that 
may be offered to it in the press or from the rostrum? Not 
at all: the only surprising part of the whole disgusting 
state ol affairs is, that the people have endured these abuses 
ing without taking the matter into their own hands, and 
establishing a new reasonable system of managing the pub- 
lie affairs without the politicians and lxx)dlers. 

The reason that it has not done so is, that it did not 
know how to do it. For before it can know, it must lay 
tie- national self-conceit, which imagines to know ev- 
erything better than any other people. The people ol the 
United States must see how other smaller and poorer na- 
tion> have managed their public affairs through hundreds, 
and some for more than a thousand years, ft must study 
and learn how they have selected, educated, and trained 
their statesmen and public officials who have led these peo- 
ple through ages of wars, famines, revolutions, and similar 
national misfortunes, so that the old nations, who have so 
long been considered by the American people as in the last 

ges of decay, are to-day stronger and more able to with- 
stand attacks from within and without than ever before. 

All these people, including even the Russians, the Turks, 
and the Chinese, base their system of office-holding upon 
the conclusion that, if it take a man years of study, work, 
and experience to learn how to carry on a mechanical, 
mercantile, or similar business, it must, certainly, take the 
same or more time, study, and experience, to take part in 
the management of the public affairs of ;i nation of many 
millions of people. 



218 A New Gospel of Labor. 

Hence in these countries the boys who are by their pa- 
rents intended to enter the public service must go through 
a series of studies at school and college. The degree of 
knowledge required varies for the different offices, so that 
even the less bright youth, or the son of the poorest parents 
is enabled to obtain the learning required at least for the 
subordinate offices. Having passed the proper examina- 
tions for the required degree at school or college, the appli- 
cant enters a sort of apprenticeship by practical work in 
the lowest offices of the branch of service in which he de- 
sires to be employed. From this bottom rung of the offic- 
ial ladder he rises up to higher positions only after several 
strict examinations as to his competency, and according to 
his special ability and attention to his duties. 

Honesty forms in the higher civilized nations of Europe 
not a part of the special fitness, because it is the funda- 
mental condition without which a public official could as 
such not exist, as the slightest indication of dishonesty 
[which means not only stealing, but embraces gross neglect 
of duty, using official time for private purposes, and simi- 
lar offences] would cause the dishonorable discharge of the 
tainted official, his exemplary punishment, and exclusion 
from all further service in any official capacity. On the 
other hand, every man who does his duty knows that he 
will stay in office, as long as he is able to fill it, and that, 
when disabled from age or disease, he is sure of a pension 
for the rest of his life. 

There are no inquisitorial searches made by the govern- 
ment about the private life of the young officials, but it is 
a self-understood rule, that they are to live respectably, 
have no vicious habits, and get into no public scandal, oth- 
erwise their resignations are asked for, or a discharge fol- 
lows. These moral requirements are particularly severe 



A New Gosjx'! of Labor '21V 

with all those who have to execute the law. Prosecuting 
attorneys and judges must not only repeatedly pass ex- 
tremely strict examinations as to their knowledge of the 
law. but their character must give assurance that they are 
tit persons tor the administration of justice before they can 
be appointed. 

The consequence of these strict demands tor the mental 
and moral make-up of all the men in public office, has been 
the development ot a high sense of honor, which makes 
them employ all their knowledge and abilities in the fulfil- 
ment of their duties, so that the people receive lull value 
for the salaries paid out. The labor done by, or under the 
superintendence of these officials proves that. Instead of 
being inferior, as is the rule in the United States, the im- 
provements made by the European governments through 
their employes are superior and cheaper than could be done 
by any private parties. 

It is a matter of course that this high standard of the 
public officials exercises a favorable influence upon the peo- 
ple and stimulates them, when they have the power to elect 
their own officials, to chose men who are up to the highest 
standard of intelligence, learning and character. The rep- 
resentatives of several ioreign nations in their respective 
national parliaments give evidence of the truth of this 
statement. They are, as a rule, among the best of their 
people, men of education, of unblemished character, well 
informed on the needs of the country; they do not forget 
the duties for which they were elected as soon as they have 
taken their official seats, but endeavor to do their whole 
duty, as they understand it till the end of their terms. 

These representatives do not have any right to recom- 
mend anybody for office; they do not flood their parlia- 
ment< with thousands of trashy hills: they spend not weeks 



220 A New -Gospel of Labor 

and months in dead-locks and with the disgraceful practi-r 
ces of ''filibustering" in order to defeat the will of a majori- 
ty; but, assisted by proper officials who revise all legal 
propositions as to their constitutionality and proper word- 
ing, so as to render them effective, they pass laws that are 
useful and valid and sure to be carried out. 

It would be preposterous to expect, that even under such a 
seemingly perfect system there would be no official failures. 
Man will fall under temptations alter many years ot an. 
honorable life; cases of favoritism and nepotism will occur 
wherever privileged aristocratic classes exist among a peo- 
ple, as is the case in every European nation; and the will 
of a King or Emperor may keep vicious and improper men 
in high office. But there are limitations to these abuses 
which public opinion would not allow to be disregarded. 
The favoritism and nepotism carried on in all European 
nations together is insignificant and vanishes in compari- 
son to what the United States officials are guilty of in that 
direction from the President down to the councilman of a 
lrontier town, with but few honorable exceptions that are to 
the rule as a drop in the bucket. 

And as to the employment of vicious and improper men 
in high office, no modern European King could safely im- 
itate the official actions of the Presidents of this republic! 
Would any modern European ruler, the Turkish and Rus~ 
sian ones perhaps excepted, dare to send an ignorant boor 
as Ambassador to an enlightened foreign people of whose 
language he does not understand a word? Would he make 
an unknown common lawyer who had never seen more 
than one or two men-of-war-ships in his life the Secretary 
of the Navy? Would he appoint a shop-keeper who had 
grown rich by means of all kinds of advertising dodges to 
the position of Postmaster General? Would he give to a 



A New Gospel of Labor 221 

man who was only a few years ago a newspaper reporter, and 
who possessed only the most superficial knowledge of mili- 
tary matters, the portfolio of the Secretary of War? Im- 
possible! His enraged subjects would either have such a 
king put into a lunatic asylum, or they would become re- 
bellious and. with the assistance of the whole army and 
navy, depose him from the throne. 

No intelligent citizen can close his eyes to the tact that 
the civil service system which is at present in use in the 
United States is a disgrace to a civilized nation and would 
far better fit the demands of a Turkish Sultan than of this 
great republic. It should be abolished, as soon as possible, 
and in its place there should be introduced a well tried sys- 
tem ot putting none but trained and properly fitted men in 
office who would serve better the longer they serve, and who 
would be honest and competent; a system that will not rob, 
but benefit the people, and which, instead of making the 
President ot the republic an absolute Czar, as he is under 
the spoils system, makes even the crowned heads of the 
nations who use it, bow to its demands for efficiency. 

It would require but very few changes to render the 
European civil service fit for that purpose. The appoint- 
ive power of the President might be limited to the mem* 
bers of his cabinet and the foreign representatives. The 
state governors and mayors of cities and towns should 
have no right to appoint anybody to office on their own re- 
sponsibility. The President, the governors, and mayors 
should be compelled to fill the other offices, upon the re" 
commendations of examining boards, from the regularly 
educated lower officials and new candidates, giving prefer- 
ence always to those rating highest in ability, competency, 
an-1 attention to duties. All these officials to serve for life, 
ag as they fill their positions satisfactorily, and to 



222 A New Gospel of Labor. 

be pensioned when disabled. The people to elect the Presi- 
dent, governor, mayor, and the members of all legislative 
bodies, from U. S. senators, down to town councilmen direct, 
ly and for a period of at least 6 years. 

The effect of such a change would be enormous. Public 
office would be a trust instead of being, as now, a part of 
the political spoils ; the people would get honest, faithful, 
and competent officials, incorruptible judges, wise legisla- 
tors, proper public improvements, low taxes, and suffer no 
losses from defaulting treasurers or official extravagance. 
There would be a general rise of the public standard of in- 
telligence and morality. 

But alas! Such a change cannot be thought of under 
the present economical state of the people. There are so 
many men in all, even the moneyed classes, who speculate 
on easily obtaining under the present system an office, 
either for sake of the salary or to satisfy their ambition ; 
there are so many thousands of politicians ieeding on the 
boodle system ; and there are so many millions of workers 
depending for employment at public or private work upon 
these politicians, that to elect, at present, legislators into ol- 
fice who would favor an abolition of the existing system of 
office-holding would hardly be possible. Nor would it be 
advisable to do so, as long as the majority of the people are 
too poor to give their children the necessary education to 
obtain their proper shares of the offices; because the 
wealthy classes who already control, through their money 
influence, the legislatures would torm a bureaucrac} T of their 
own kind and followers, which, working hand in hand with 
the already existing plutocracy, would completely enslave 
the producing classes. 

The abolition of the official spoils system in city, state 
and nation, can therefore not take place until the great 



.4 New Gospel of Labor. 223 

masses oi the people have been redeemed from wanl and 
starvation, and have, through the solution oi the labor- 
question, become freemen with steady work and sufficient 
incomes, so that the rush into the public service ceas< s. 
Then, when those who are now poor will be enabled to get 
their children as well educated, as at present the wealthy 
alone can do; when everybody can earn a respectable sub- 
sistence in the great industrial, agricultural, and mercantile 
unions, instead of having to become a lying, ialse, deceiv- 
ing politician in order to obtain a living in an office; then 
the system of employing none but trained, competent, and 
faithful officers will be introduced and open up, together 
with the new system oi co-operative labor, a road of pro- 
gress !"!• the whole nation. 

I Irises will decrease to a minimum ; the laws become less 
re and simpler : the people more intelligent and better ; 
life more pleasant for all, and the people of the United 
State.- will rise, individually, and as a nation, socially, eco- 
nomically, and politically to a height of political freedom 
and human perfection which no nation of old or modern 
times has ever achieved or even endeavored to obtain, and 
which, in a short while, will be adopted by all the civilized 
nation> of the earth. 



CHAPTER VI. 



conclusion. 

The Main Objection to the New System Answered. — 
The Friends of the Proposed Measure Should Spread 
the New Gospel of Labor. 

Can all this be brought about? asks the anxious reader, 
who has, since years, through hard times and poverty in 
vain hoped for a change to the better and is becoming 
hopeless. Can the introduction of the new industrial sys- 
tem here offered be effected through the co-operation of the 
working classes, when it is known, that they often 
quarrel among themselves, that they are inexperienced in 
managing large business establishments; and when it is to 
be feared that the experiment, if made, will cost the coun- 
try millions of dollars through the failure and breaking up 
of some of these unions? 

As this is the objection which those friendly to the work- 
ingmen and, probably, not a few of the latter even, will 
have against the proposed bill, it is worthy of consideration. 
Nobod}^ who has observed the growth of the American 
trade unions, the very basis of this proposed new system, 
who has seen how, after suffering from opposition by other 
organizations, after quarrels within their ow T n ranks, after 
losing strikes and similar reverses, they have still kept 



A New Cospd of Labor 225 

growing, becoming tinner and better managed, until they 
include to-day over a million of workmen, scattered all ov- 
er the country and yet strongly united, all those who have 
watched the progress of the prominent American labor 
unions must acknowledge, that there is intelligence, broth- 
erly feeling, ami discipline enough among workmen to 
make them capable of managing their own affairs. 

And as there are, besides the larger labor organizations* 
many smaller ones, the total number of the organized 
workers of the United States must be estimated at about 
2 millions, [not including the half . political farmers' 
granges and alliances] an army of no mean proportions 
which is being managed with practically no expense and 
with less officers, and unpaid ones at that, than the little 
army of 25,000 soldiers of the United States. 

It is to be considered that these two millions of men 
are not kept together by the iron hand ot a dictator; that 
they are voluntary members, tied together for the purpose 
of protecting their rights; that in so doing they incur 
many personal inconveniences; and that they never stand 
firmer, like brothers and heroes, together, than when in or- 
der to uphold the rules adopted as their principles they 
are required to sacrifice their only means of existence, their 
labor and wages, and endure, together with their iamilies, 
want, privation and hunger, for weeks and months. In 
view of these i acts, it must be admitted by the unprejudic- 
ed observer and the future historians ol the labor troubles 
will tell it to the world with admiration] , that the labor 
organizations ot these modern times surpass, as far as con- 
cerns the number of their members, their voluntary disci- 
pline, their willingness to sacrifice all they possess for their 
principle-, all other organizations got up by the most intel- 
ligent and wealthy or by any other class of people in mod- 
ern and ancient tim< 



226 A New Gospel o1 Labor 

And if the workers give such surprising proof of their or- 
ganizatory and executive ability for a purpose irom which 
they are to reap at the best but a small benefit, and for 
which they have often even to bring sacrifices, there is cer- 
tainly more reason why they should exhibit the same and 
increased ability in managing the proposed unions, when 
they know that, by so doing, they materially increase their 
wages, obtain steady employment, become secured against 
sickness and old age, and change their entire condition to 
the better, and when w T ith every day passed under the new 
system they become more contented, more intelligent, and 
better experienced. 

There is no doubt that a newly organized local union 
will have business to attend to that is new to its members, 
but the workmen may as well take into their union a well 
skilled, schooled, expert manager for such work, at a price 
which the present employers can afford to pay them. And 
since, at the introduction of the new system, every old plant 
or manufacturing establishment would go into the posses- 
sion of the respective union just as it stands, ready to pro- 
ceed with the customary work of production, w T ith every 
superintendent, book-keeper, clerk and foreman in his 
place, the change of ownership would be no more felt than 
when the owner dies and leaves his business to an inexperi- 
enced wife or orphans who carry it on, as before, through 
the assistance of their hired managers, superintendents, 
foremen and workingmen. 

The unions would make use of the same extraordinary 
business talent possessed by some exceptionally able men, 
as the present great corporations ; and these men would 
willingly join the locals and gladly render their best ser- 
vices to their brother workmen, for the new system affords 
them safer employment, shorter working hours, and the life 
of a freeman instead of that of a hired employe. 



A y< W Gospel of Labor 



99.' 



But even though, through lack of experience and want of 
harmony, some of the unions should dissolve and have to 
be reorganized before they could overcome evil advisers in 
their midst, or similar adverse influences; and supposing 

that the national government were thereby put to the ex- 
pense ol several millions or even hundreds of millions of 
dollars, although there seems hardly a possibility of so 
great a loss, would not the ultimate success be a prize well 
worth securing at such a cost, and is not this money lost to 
the people, anyway, every year through the failure oi in 
competent business-men".'' 

There is no individual who, after having lor years, work- 
ed tor ethers and then established his own business, does 
not have to learn at his own expense how to manage it, 
and not a few fail once or oitener be'ore succeeding in be- 
coming independent business men. It would, therefore, be 
unjust to expect that a larger number of these individuals, 
working together should or could escape making the same 
experience. And it would be absurd to demand, that a 
2 ater number, the great masses oi the people, should, 
when they become independent workers under the new sys- 
tem, be able to make the water of public intelligence rise 
above its source by avoiding the errors which, in their hu- 
man failings, the individuals are committing every day. 
But these unavoidable losses will steadily decrease through 
the influence and experience of the more successlul unions 
and through the well known energy and adaptability of 
the majority of the American workers who will, besides 
not (ail to adopt in their new national unions such strict 
Nations as to enable them to overcome and remove 
any element of discord and failure from their locals. 

These losses are furthermore lessened by the fact that 
they are not dead lo^e.> to the entire people. They can 



228 A New Gospel of Labor 

only consist in wasted labor, the wages for doing which are 
spent here in the United States among the business men 
and the shop keepers and increase, temporarily, the con- 
suming power of the people. And in this regard the losses 
which the new system would, in the beginning, probably in- 
flict upon the nation would compare very favorably with 
the increasing losses which the present industrial system 
allows a small number of industrial kings, coal barons, 
and railroad magnates to cause to the people of the United 
States. 

This small but almighty gentry is not only exhausting 
the consuming power ot the people at large by paying the 
working producers starvation wages and by charging the 
consumers high prices, but they furthermore reduce their 
own and the national consumption by spending the wealth 
so wrung from the people in foreign countries, in buying 
castles and deer parks, fine women and horses, in dancing 
attendance to, and dining and wining European courtiers 
and nobles, while the people of the United States pay not 
only the fiddler, but the entire cost, and suffer want by the 
millions in order to do so. And these thus inflicted losses 
increase every year with the multiplication of the million- 
aires' wealth and contribute, steadily, to the greater impov- 
erishment of the people. 

The objection that the workmen are unable to carry out 
the proposed plan of a new industrial system, and that its 
introduction would cause the people too heavy financial 
losses, will not stand. The workingmen are equal to the 
task, and no losses which possibly can occur through the 
new system would be too high a price for the abolition of 
the present inhuman vampire system which drains the life- 
blood of the overwhelming majority of the people in the 
interest of an insignificantly small class. The bill herein 



A New Gospel ot Labor. 229 

proposed can be passed and the new system introduced le- 
gally, peaceably, and successfully by means of the ballot- 
box it the American workmen determine to do so. 

It requires no party organization to achieve this purpose. 
The author who has made it the object ot his liie to get 
this bill passed by congress, has decided upon a plan of 
campaign which experience in passing labor-friendly bills 
in congress and in state legislatures has taught him to be 
inexpensive and effective. As soon as this book has been 
brought sufficiently beiore the public, he will make known 
the plan ot campaign and set it in operation, for which 
purpose the proceeds of the sale of this book are to be used. 

In the mean time, let every working man and woman 
who desires to be freed from the clutches of starvation, 
poverty and care, let every business man who wishes to 
see financial and industrial depressions cease, let every 
person who believes that humanity and not millionaires 
should rule this country with its 65 millions of people, let 
them all consider the proposition made in this book fairly 
and without prejudice, and let all those who believe it to be 
just and reasonable speak and agitate for it with their 
friends, their neighbors, their acquaintances, in office, shop, 
or home, and the years will only be few until the time 
when the people of the United States will take the road to 
liberty, happiness, and the highest progress, by adopting 

The New ( Iospel of Labor ! 



THK END. 



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